Politicians and other useful idiots.

Politicians, Civil Servants and others of that ilk justify the high salaries they enjoy by relating them to what is on offer in the private sector.
Apart from those that fall into the category of what Lenin liked to call Useful Idiots, most of them would be virtually unemployable outside the Public Sector.. For the purposes of this particular argument, a useful idiot would be someone responsible for or close to the decision making processes in a major Ministry like the MOD. Into this category fall several erstwhile Prime Ministers, Health Secretaries and assorted Sir Humphreys and retired generals who are able to parlay their contacts and presumed insider knowledge into a consultancy role or a seat on the board of a defence contractor or energy supplier.
For the remainder, the residue who have enjoyed neither power nor any especial influence, the best they can hope for in the real world is occasional, low-level consultancy work.
Not to beat about the bush,politicians are useless at business.
Even back in the Thatcher era, when the cabinet was supposedly stuffed with first class business brains, officladom always got taken to the cleaners by the private sector. Take the trains. Once upon a time we had a national rail network and one train operator, British Rail. Since they provided a national service, they were paid from the national purse. However, this monopoly, we were told, could not provide the transport service required by a 20th Century nation. It was sclerotic, inefficient and did not deliver value for money.
Privatising the whole shooting match, we were assured, would enable us to get rid of subsidies, save stacks of money, lead to major improvements in service and give the country a rail network that would be the envy of the world. A few decades later, instead of a single national monopoly,what we actually have is a number of regional private monopolies operating their own services on discrete routes. Maintaining the tracks all of these companies rely on is the responsibility of a semi-nationalised company that does all the grunt work and which, despite privatisation, sucks in virtually the same levels of subsidy as when we, the nation, owned the whole shooting match.
There is a similar story when it comes to our major utilities. Where once we had national and local providers of gas, electricity, water and sewage whose assets were owned by their customers - that would be you and me - we now have a multiplicity of providers, many foreign owned, who operate effective monopolies in their geographic regions and use the profits generated by their UK operations to shield consumers in their home markets in France and Germany from rising energy prices.
In more recent times, the Blair adminsitration managed to enrich any number of foreign companies, civil servants and assorted advisors every time it sold another important national asset. This was ever so slightly at odds with the avowed inetntion which was, in each case, to realise asset values for the greater good and enrichment of the nation at large. Of these deals, the most lucrative for the purchasers, if not for us, has to have been the sale of DERA; the erstwhile Defence Research Agency. Dubbed the James Bond agency by the popular Press, thanks to its work on exotic weaponry, DERA in fact was the repository of some of the best and most valuable research in the world. I read somewhere that it held more patents on advanced materials and technology than any other body.
To cut a long story short, DERA`was sold to a US company and we were assured that the price was a true reflection of the company's market value. A couple of the senior Civil Servants who had been involved in the negotiationswere suddenly transmogrified into high-flying directors and pocketed huge salaries and bonuses when, 18 months after the sale, Quinetic as the new entity had become, was laucnhed on the UK stock market, achieving a launch valuation many millions higher than the original purchase price. This was one of several deals overseen by Gordon Brown, the man whose first venture into capitalism was to sell our gold reserves at jumble sale prices - and he was reckoned to be one of the more astute negotiators in the cabinet of the time.
Another of the deals whose consequences we are suffering even as I write was the sale of the, previously nationalised, British Airporsts Authority (BAA) to Ferrovia, a building and construction company from that repository of aviation history and knowledge, Spain.
To be fair, what attracted Ferrovia to the company was the giant shoping mall that we know as Heathrow Airport. The fact that it had two runways tacked onto the side and is the main conduit for trade into and out of UK and much of Europe was a minor consideration in the purchase. What really counted was the captive, albeit transitory, stream of shoppers that made its way into the collective maw of its shops and restaurants.
Which is why all of their focus was on maximising the returns from the retail side of the operation at the expense of the airport activities. Consequently, when snow fell on Heathrow, it was under-eqipped and under-staffed and failed to cope with the resulting chaos that ensued. Chaos that was transmitted via satellite to the tvs of every country in the world. What these images told the rest of the world was that our nation is inefficient, ill-equipped and, not to put too fine a point on it, incompetents. One message they did not convey is that the UK is open and eager for business..

Unfortunately, as we discover time after time, our politicians struggle to muster even half a brain between them when it comes to business Thus, Heathrow and other important airports were allowed to pass into foreign owership with no apparent strings attached in terms of expected levels of efficiency or performance and no sanctions agreed should performance fail to reach those standards
The parent company of BAA will bank around £1 billion in profits from its UK operation. Good fro them and their investors, not so good for the rest of us. Our global status has been undermined Many of the passengers forced to endure mediaeval conditions at Heathrow will think twice before flying. to the UK again. Some, understandably, will never return, preferring the certaities procided by competitive airports such as Schipol. Apparently, the official regulator has no powers to force BAA to make reparations for what has happened or to force it to equip itself properly against future adverse weather conditions. The best we can hope for is that passengers will group together to force the airport into paying compensation.
What should happen, as a matter of urgency, is that the Minister for Transport, Phillip Hammond, reads BAA the riot act, gives them a list of demands that they must comply with if they are to be given licence to continue running Heathrow, with the threat of re-nationalisation as the ultimate sanction.
What will proably happen is quite the opposite. The furore will melt away with the snow. The politicians and Civil Servants will breathe a sigh of relief and then get ready to be stitched up again when we come sell the Search and Rescue Services to a French-American consortium.

Real world politics

Members of our political elite operate on a completely different plane to the rest of us.
For the most part, we are preoccupied by the mundanities of life, such as feeding, clothing and housing ourselves. Any spare time we have, we devote to sports, hobbies, music and other pastimes. While so occupied we, perhaps naively, take it as read that our political and civil service masters will concern themselves with more serious matters such as the security and defence of our country and our collective health, education and.wealth. We regard it not merely as their job but, to use a somewhat devalued word, their duty. There exists, or should exist, a simple compact between us: we vote them into office and they place the welfare of this country and its people above all other considerations.
So, it's disconcerting to discover that compact is so one-sided. The things that concern the average person in this country are not necessarily highest on the to-do list of any aspiring modern politician. Our concerns are, predominantly, local. Theirs, for a variety of reasons not the least of which is personal vanity and ambition, are almost exclusively global. When they turn their attention to national issues they invariably do solely to silence local dissent, to placate some special interest group or lobby; or to burnish their own reputation .
Today, tribalism trumps national interest at every turn.
Consequently, it is a particular ideology or party line that governs their actions rather than any heightened awareness of the common national good.
Thus,at a time when Russia has been, correctly, labelled a gangster state and Putin is starting to rattle actual and metaphorical sabres; when Argentina is showing renewed interest in staking a claim on the Falklands thanks to the prospect of huge oil and gas reserves, the coalition has decided to scrap our only major aircraft carrier and the Harriers that fly from its decks.
Just as we learn that English schoolchildren are now among the most obese in the developed world, Michael Gove decides to cut funding for school sports.
And, despite almost daily warnings of the business challenges we face now and well into the future from China, India, Brazil and the rest of the emerging nations, the Government decides now is precisely the right time to increase University tuition fees.T
The potential savings provided by these economies are, by modern standards, pitiful, calculated in millions rather than billions.
Meanwhile, in sunny Cancun, Energy minister, Chris Huhne, and a cast of hundreds eanestly global warming while the rest of us endure one of the coldest starts to winter on record. So moved have they been by the undoubted seriousness of the situation that Huhne has, apparently, committed the UK to contributing £1.5 billion to help combat global warming in the Third World. Wow, and we thought that all the scrimping and saving we are being forced to do was to prevent the country going bust.
At home, beset by ice, sleet and snow, while the Cancun conference generates carbon emissions equivalent to those of a small African country, Lord Hutton has restated the commitment to invest in more wind turbines to meet our future energy needs. The last time I looked at the figures for this programme of energetic lunacy, the annual cost was projected to be between £20 to £30 billion. This despite the fact that all the evidence points to wind turbines being the biggest potential white elephants since the Sinclair C5 electric car..
Should Hutton require a change of profession, he would do worse than consider that of a professional mourner. His ability to keep a straight face while extolling the very dubious benefits of wind power would make him a priceless asset to any ambitious funeral parlour. The claims he makes for wind turbines fly in the face not just of logic but what is actually happening in the real world.
Here we are freezing our proverbials off. Every business and household faces their highest ever energy bills and Hutton is seriously suggesting that what we need are more windmills! Hasn't anyone in his team pointed out that, during the current freeze, the existing wind turbines have been as much use as tits on a bull?
What they need is neither breathy zephyrs nor gales but steady regular wind. What we have had over the last month has either been hurricane force winds during which the turbines have to be locked down, or no wind at all, in which case they remain static. In fact, some installations have had to draw power from the national grid to keep their blades turning and prevent them from freezing. None of this should come as a surprise to anyone who has spent more than a few winters in this country. Generally speaking, we get the steadiest winds in the summer and Autumn months. Winter winds are either raging gales or non-existent. No matter, Hutton and his henchpeople want to bet the house - or at least £30 billion per year of our money - on wind turbine technology as the answer to our energy needs.
He backs his spurious claims regarding the efficacy of wind turbines with even more misinformed drivel regarding the business and employment opportunities the new wind age will open up for the UK. Again, this flies very firmly in the face of logic.
The most technologically advanced countries in the world when it comes to wind energy are Scandinavian; more particularly Denmark and Sweden. They have been using wind energy for close to thirty years. Ergo, they have a thirty year lead over everybody else when it comes to designing and manufacturing wind turbine machines.
That is why 80% of the equipment used to build theThanet offshore wind farm that was opened in September was designed and built in Scandinavia. Even the cable that connects the wind farm to the national grid was laid by an Italian company. In fact, the whole installation has created a grand total of 22 permanent jobs for people in that area of Kent. These have been bought at an enormous cost, thanks to the £1.2 billions in subsidies pledged to the renewable energy companies over the anticipated 20 year life of the field.
Like any true modern politician, Hutton is never one to let anything as awkward as the truth intrude on his version of reality. According to him, wind turbines will not only give us unprecedented levels of virtually free energy, they will create a cornucopia of high tech opportunities for British industry.
While we wait for this bounty to fall into our laps, we have to endure energy costs that will rise, year on year, way above ordinary inflation levels; perfectly serviceable coal-fired power stations being closed in order to meet some spurious EU mandated reductions in carbon emissions and the uplifting prospect of new nuclear capacity being created by French contractors because our own nuclear design and engineering skills were deemed to be redundant by a previous group of clueless politicians.
There is an upside to all of this, of course. Both Huhne and Hutton will earn some very valuable Brownie points with some influential Green lobbyists and pressure groups. And, with a fair wind so to speak, could parlay their energetic activities into valuable consultancy work or directorships once they have completed their respective stints at the trough of public service.

Conned and lied to.

Are all politicians naturally venal?
Given the performance thus far of the main players in the new government, it looks very much as if they are.
Getting rid of Gordon Brown and his Labour cronies provided the same sense of relief as a good burp. It released unwanted and debilitating flatulence and thus cleared the way for something we hoped would be altogether more edifying. That sense of a new beginning lasted what, a couple of months? It has dissipated as rapidly as the main election pledges made by the Conservatives and their allies in the new Lib Con alliance. Notice I refer to an alliance rather than a coalition. The only noticeable coalescing so far seems to have occurred between Dave and Nick. The rest of the motley crew involved in governing us seem to be paddling their own canoes up creeks of their own choosing. Thus, there seems to be a much more natural affinity between Dave and Nick than between, let's say, Dave and Kenneth Clarke or either of those two and Ian Duncan Smith. On the LibDem side, Nick Clegg looks much more comfortable with Dave than, say, Vince Cable.
Not that it's unusual in any team - whether sporting or managerial - to find disparate personalities with little in common with each other outside of their work. It would just be so much more reassuring to feel that those charged with running the country were looking at the same hymn book, let alone singing from it.
Naturally, there has to be some give and take to make the alliance work. The problem is, all of this compromising is being done without any reference to the people that matter - the electorate. So far, the Conservatives have reneged on pledges relating to Europe, immigration, crime ( and suitable punishment) and repeal of the Human Rights Act; basically all of the key points they based their campaign on. For their part, the LbDems have backtracked on Tuition fees, softened their die-hard commitment to Europe and accepted the need for some hardening of attitudes to welfare and benefits. If you believe in the essential goodness of human nature, you might excuse this all as the kind of pragmatic compromise needed to enable them to focus on the real problem, the economy. That won't wash either, though. Not now that George Osborne has committed us to lending 7 billion Euros or more to Ireland - thus wiping out any potential savings accrued by way of his austerity measures - simply to please and appease his masters in Brussels.
Basically, what we have wished upon ourselves is another coven of self-serving chancers whose only real interest is the pursuit of power for its own sake and who, quite clearly, are just as prepared as their Labour predecessors to lie and cheat to attain and retain it,

Back to the future

It's a long time since I could raise enough energy or interest to face writing this blog. Apparently, an overwhelming interest in politicians ands their antics can do that to you.
Overwhelm you, that is.

The political landscape of Great Britain has changed in the intervening months. Labour has been replaced by a curious hybrid called ConLibDem. Much like the changing of the guard, although the personnel may differ, the replacements seem to be wearing exactly the same uniforms and performing precisely the same drills.

David Cameron, once if not Eurosceptic at least Eurowary, has obviously been guided into the same inner sanctum where his immediate immediate predecessors were first made to see the Euro light. Like them, he is already making lots of noise about "fighting" to protect British interests while appending his signature to any and all documents placed before him with little apparent resistance. Thus, he flies into Brussels on the wings of a stern pledge to hold the EU to zero increase in its bloated budgets. Then pronounces a great victory in restricting them to a mere 2.9%. Thanks Dave. It will certainly help stave off national bankruptcy, having to donate a few extra billion or so a year to the Eurocoffers.

Next, despite the fact that he has been in power for such a short period he has barely had time to learn the names of his LibDem cabinet colleagues, he has managed to strike up such a cosy relationship with Sarkozy that, very chummily, we have agreed to share one of our yet-to-be-built aircraft carriers with them. Oh yes, and also agreed that a French dockyard can have the contract for maintaining them once they are built and in service.

Not that this arrangement in any way furthers the plans for a joint Euro Army/Navy/Air Force at all. Oh No, this is just a couple of long term allies simply deciding to share assets, much as we did at Agincourt, Crecy and Waterloo. Justin a slightly different way.
Amazing what can be organized via a couple of friendly texts, isn't it?


Promises to protect Civil and individual liberties have gone much the same way. Theresa May has, with little pomp and absolutely no consultation either in Parliament or with the public, committed us even further to the reality of a Pan-European police force and Judiciary, reinforcing the reach and scope of foreign governments to track down and arrest British citizens without the intervention of the British courts. All we need to hear from Saint Theresa now is Labour's favourite old saw. You know the one: it goes something like: If you have done nothing wrong, you have nothing to fear.


Across the water, the Irish tragedy is unfolding. It is truly ironic that a country that fought tooth and nail for independence from the British Empire looks as if it is about to meekly surrender and allow itself to be sucked into the ever-widening maw of the new, Greater German Empire. If you hear a lot of thunder over the next week or so, it will be the sound of the old Teutonic gods of war laughing themselves silly. All the years, all the men killed and blood shed by successive Reichs to bring first Europe and then the world under German domination and now matronly Angele Merkel is achieving that very objective without a shot being fired in anger. Greece was first. Now it's Ireland's turn. Next it will be Portugal, Spain and Italy. And, if little George Osborne continues to put our money into the pot for each bail-out, despite the fact that we are not part of the Euro Zone, then it will, inevitably, be the turn of what was once Great Britain.


It's good to be back.

It's a free country - part 2

Shawn Holes is an American who, like a lot of Americans , happens to be a practising Christian. In his case it is a particularly muscular brand of Christianity that he practises, involving street preaching and proselytising.
Unfortunately, nobody told Shawn that, in today's United Kingdom, such activities can get you into an awful lot of trouble.
Around two weeks ago, Shawn was in Glasgow with a group of fellow evangelists when he was arrested under one of the plethora of hate laws introduced since 1997. His crime? He was preaching to a crowd in a Glasgow street and quoted from St Luke's Gospel to answer a query about the biblical attitude to homosexuality. This is how he describes what happened:

"On March 18Th I was arrested while preaching the
Gospel in downtown Glasgow Scotland. I spent a horrible night in jail and
all I can say is that it was just miserable. Too many details from this
specific incident occurred for me to list here. I will say however that
what it came down to was that two people were supposedly offended when I said
that homosexuality is a sin against Jesus, therefore the arrest. I was given two options:
1- plead guilty to some really trumped up charges and
possibly pay a small fine of hopefully only 50 pounds or so and go home by
Monday as planned or
2- plead not guilty and have to spend up to 8 weeks
waiting for the trial NOT being allowed to leave the country with no guarentee (sic)
of winning the case.
I chose option number one. Big bummer though. The
fine was 1000 pounds. Thats (sic)1600 US dollars."

As far as the police were concerned, Shawn's mistake was in asserting that homosexuality is a sin. They were wrong. Shawn's real mistake was in assuming that, because freedom of expression had been central to our existence for at least the last couple of centuries, that this still held good today. Whatever the cause of this misapprehension, it cost both him and us dear. Shawn is financially and spiritually out of pocket. But, we have taken another significant step along the road to moral bankruptcy.

The bunch of fascistic pygmies who currently hold sway over us has made it its business to silence anyone who regards homosexuality as anything other than a completely natural state of being. Actually, what they have done and continue to do, thanks to Harriet Harman's upcoming equality bill, is create a whole raft of lifestyles and belief systems that are protected from comment or opinion, or at least any comment or opinion that does not conform to their narrow world view. They are unable - or unwilling - to understand that suppressing and criminalising opinions is more discriminatory and prejudicial than anything that Shawn and his ilk could ever do or say.

The professional atheist, Richard Dawkins, has a whole website dedicated to promulgating his beliefs. Every day he mocks anyone who believes in God, whatever form that God or belief might take. He does the same in print, on the radio and television and in public and invites his readers and listeners to share his dislike. In its own way, Dawkin's atheism has much in common with the religious fervour of the more extreme religious proselytisers.

As far as I know, he has yet to be arrested for preaching hatred. Which is as it should be. Every opinion is valid and every belief system has some merit, for the simple reason that there is always someone capable of testing or disputing their veracity. 20 years ago, had anyone proposed a law under which a completely innocent, law-abiding visitor to the UK could be threatened with gaol simply for expressing an opinion they would, rightly, have been laughed out of court by the liberal establishment.

Orchestrating the laughter would have been the likes of Jack Straw, Gordon Brown, Tony and Cherie Blair and Harriet Harman - the same bunch of chancers that has done so much to undermine our democracy and create a country completely alien to people raised on the ideal of a free society.

The great turkey vote

Conservatives are puzzled, and with good reason. For the last few years, polls have shown their share of the vote climbing to and staying steady at around 40% - enough to guarantee them victory and a decent majority in any General Election.
Given the litany of disasters that have assailed Labour for the last two years, they should be in a position where they would be pushed to get an offer of coalition from the Raving Loony Party, let alone the LibDems.
And yet, weirdly and almost inexplicably, Brown and his cohorts are not dead and buried. The most recent polls put the two main parties neck and neck. With Labour suffering from so many self-inflicted wounds why have the Tories consistently failed to finish them off?
Perhaps the answer lies in the latest employment statistics .
According to the Office for National Statistics, employment rose in the final quarter of 2009. Hosanna, Good News shout the pundits. Well, perhaps. The problem is that the 7000 new jobs created were all in the Public Sector. The picture was somewhat different in the Private Sector, where 61,000unfortunates were thrown out of work.
Consequently, as of the beginning of this year, although the total number of people in work was 28.86 million, almost a quarter of them, 6.1 million people, work for government in one form or another.

So, let's imagine a scenario in which someone whose salary is around 7% higher than the private sector equivalent, with a final salary pension inflation-proofed and guaranteed by the Government, is considering his options at the forthcoming General Election. On the one hand, he has Messrs Darling and Brown saying that to make wholesale cuts to public services would stall the recovery, feeble as it is, so their approach will be gently, gently. On the other, he has George Osborne promising to take an axe to public expenditure and, by definition, public jobs at the first available opportunity. All other things being equal, which of these is likely to represent the most attractive proposition to the ou Public Sector worker?
Now, from the gainfully employed, let's turn to the gainfully unemployed; in other words the multitude of those of working age who are, in official terminology, Inactive. There are 8.16 million of them, to be precise. Of that number, 2.31 million are students who are not in the labour market. 2.5 million are officially unemployed and drawing benefits of some kind. Many of these are desperately unhappy to be in that predicament and will do almost anything to get back to paid work of some kind or another.
But, unfortunately, a large number are not. There are whole areas of the UK where lack of a job is a fact of life, where several generations subsist entirely on benefits. In these areas, some of the shrewder ones realised long ago that it is more rewarding to be officially incapable of work through disability than to bother with unemployment and job seekers' allowance. There are nearly 3 millions claiming Disability benefit. Of that number, a surprising proportion, as many as 1/2 million apparently, are under the age of 25.
Given that this group will be a target for some serious pruning, it is difficult to see any incentive for them to vote Conservative at the next election.

The UK allows any EU citizen who is permanently resident here to vote in ALL elections. By contrast, a UK citizen resident in Ireland is allowed to vote in local and European elections there but not at a General election or in any national referenda. The same is true of most other EU countries.
That means that Poles and other newly-minted EU citizens from eastern Europe who have settled here in the last three to four years are all entitled to vote in the coming General Election. This new constituency of potential Labour voters was one of the planned benefits of Labour's drive for multiculturalism when it came to office. As we are all now well aware, the assumption was that these newcomers would not only be grateful to their Labour hosts but register their gratitude in the most practical way possible, by endorsing the Party at the General Election. Suitably galvanised, this group could easily swell the Labour vote by several hundred thousand come the day
Do not be surprised to see a concerted government campaign to persuade these newcomers to exercise their newly-acquired right to vote over the coming six to eight weeks; purely in the interests of Democracy, of course.

Take all of these groups together and what you get is a significant proportion of the population for whom the current administration is the principal source of income. Asking them to elect the Tories is akin to expecting turkeys to vote for Christmas.

It's a free country

As a child growing up in London I was as argumentative as I am now. The only way that I would concede an argument was if you battered me senseless.
So, one of my favourite, regular Sunday morning outings was to Speaker's Corner in Hyde Park where I could watch Nazi's argue with communists, Methodists with Quakers and atheists with anyone of faith, to my heart's content. I remember, particularly, one black African dressed in traditional robes who harangued the crowd unmercifully on any topic, ranging from colonialism and slavery to the horrible English weather with equal fervour and passion. There was no subject that was taboo or off limits. You would see the occasional bobby on the fringes of the crowd, keeping an eye on proceedings. There was a lot of heckling and name-calling, much of it very personal and specific; but it was all part of the motley.
On Sunday afternoon, on the cobbles adjacent to the Tower of London, you could watch an escape artist struggle free from a tarpaulin wrapped in chains and pierced by various swords and other pointed objects: providing, that is, his pitch hadn't already been high jacked by Lord Soper, standing on a soap box and preaching his own brand of muscular Methodist Socialism to groups of bemused American tourists, argumentative off-duty dockers and occasional snotty little schoolboys like me.
One major boon of being English, planted in my unformed mind by these early experiences was that speech was free: That we all had an unalienable right to say precisely what we wanted on any subject under the sun. "It's a free country. I'll say what I like" was the ultimate clincher used in arguments by everyone from schoolboy to grizzled pensioner . I know, I used it throughout my school years and well into my late forties.
It's not an expression you will hear too much these days. It's not one that I employ at all any more. And for very good reason. England is no longer the home of free speech. People have been silenced, or at the very least reduced to whispers, on a whole range of topics by the insidious creep of political correctness and what is, spuriously, labelled equality legislation.
OK, things weren't perfect in my youth. Freedom of expression probably didn't seem too great a principle if you were black or Irish and subjected to racial insults; or a homosexual on the end of some queer-bashing vitriol. It was easier for a landlord to post a notice saying " No, blacks, Irish or Jews" than it was to get hold of a copy of Lady Chatterley's Lover back then. But, the boundaries of "correctness" were a mixture of what was customary and generally accepted by the majority. This didn't mean that minority views or opinions weren't tolerated, they were, because the tradition of freedom of expression was breathed in along with the rain and the smog.
If people got hurt and offended, I am genuinely sorry. But, freedom of expression is not something that can be doled out in carefully weighed portions. Governments do not have any greater sense of what is right or correct than the rest of us. In fact, because they are vested interests with very specific congregations to succour, they tend to be much narrower than the public at large in their range of beliefs.
Witness the current administration, which has gradually eroded the rights of the majority in order to protect those of some very small, specific but highly vocal minorities.
This political correctness has manifested itself in all aspects of our lives; not least in people's reticence when it comes to speaking their mind. "You can't say that" is an expression heard in offices, pubs and homes whenever someone voices an opinion that strays from the conventionally acceptable on a raft of subjects ranging from immigration to homosexuality. The stick of multiculturalism has been used to beat people into submission and stifle grown-up, informed debate on whether or not it is sensible for a country with the highest population density in Europe - England - to encourage ever greater numbers of immigrants to come here.
There have been recent instances of sincere Christians, picketing a homosexual conference with posters containing biblical quotes, being arrested and convicted of hate crimes. Earlier this year, a couple who run a hotel was charged with a similar crime for debating Islam with a female convert to that particular religion. She, objected to them questioning her belief and called in the police. To their eternal shame, they reacted by arresting the couple under hate crime legislation.
Now, Harriet Harman is clouding the issue still further with the Equality Bill due to come into law in the autumn. Among other things, this will make it possible to charge a health club worker with discrimination if he - or she - offers a woman a lighter set of weights that they might offer a man. Protected religions will include any faith system including atheism and Jediism - if there is such a thing. Presumably, telling someone that Luke Skywalker is a comic character and doesn't actually exist will constitute an assault on the beliefs of a Jedi and result in some sort of criminal charge.
It sounds comical when considered in that light. But it's not. It is sinister and evil: Yet another brick in the wall imprisoning freedom of speech and expression.
If we continue along the same path and fail to counter the forces of political correctness no one in this country will ever win another argument by saying , " I can say what I like. It's a free country".

NB. Since writing this article, I have read a piece with a similar theme, written by PhilipJohnston in the Daily Telegraph, which is an extract from his latest book, title "Bad Law". Click on the link to read the article:http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/columnists/philipjohnston/7494131/How-do-we-win-back-our-freedom.html

GB - Liar or incompetent?

So, it wasn't Call Me Dave who tripped Mr Brown up at Prime Minister's Questions this week but a Tory back-bencher who had bothered to do some research in the Commons Library on the topic of funding for the military. Tony Baldry challenged Gorgon on his statement to the Chilcot Enquiry that military spending had risen "in real terms" year on year under the Labour Government. He pointed out that there were at least three years where this had not been the case, according to the Commons Library.
Forced onto the back foot, Brown confirmed that he had already written to the Enquiry admitting his error. Unfortunately, Cameron and Clegg were so overjoyed at the prospect of landing a few cheap shots that they failed to ask the obvious question: If Brown had already written to the Chilcott Enquiry, how long had he been aware that the evidence he presented at the enqury was false? Moreover, how could a man who claimed that it was only his financial savvy that had saved the world's financial systems from total collapse be so utterly useless at adding up that he didn't know that, during the three fallow years Baldry mentioned, military expenditure had actually declined rather than increased, in real terms?
The truth is that we cannot know whether or not he simply made a mistake or simply lied to Chilcot.
Whichever version is the truth, it cannot disguise the fact that the man who wants to lead this country for another five years is either a serial liar - or a serial incompetent.
It does not exactly represent a very rosy future for the rest of us, does it?

A`peculiar equality

Equality is a much abused term, favoured by a whole slew of carpetbaggers intent only on promoting their own narrowly-focused agenda. As a consequence, we get situations like the one that arose this week when two dicta from different arms of the equality octopus seemed to confound and contradict each other.

The first deals with a heinous crime - rape. The second concerns itself with the much less serious problem of equality between the sexes in a gymnasium or health club. One is of real importance but is subtly undermined by the spurious nature of the other whose only purpose is to provide added froth to the feminist agenda.

We are already familiar with the extreme feminist view that all sex is rape; or, to be more precise, all heterosexual sex is rape. Now, it appears, that this is close to becoming the official position. Any woman who has sex with a man whilst drunk can now, officially, be regarded as having been raped since, by definition, she was not in a position to provide informed consent to the act. On the other hand, should the man be in an equally catatonic condition - but not presumably have been afflicted by the dreaded brewer's droop - he cannot use this as a defence to the charge of rape. Irrespective of his alchoholic intake, he is deemed to be capable of asking for and understanding whether or not consent has been given before proceeding.

From this we can only infer that men are deemed to be the stronger sex in any situation where alchohol is involved. If both sexes were, indeed, equal it stands to reason that they would be affected by alchohol equally and, by extension, would be equally as capable of deciding whether or not they want to have sex. But, this is apparently not the official view.
Which is strange because, in the health club, total equality between the sexes is to be adhered to so rigidly that simply offering a woman a lighter set of weights to lift than a man is regarded as discriminatory.
This might give rise to an interesting dilemma in the future, given our predilection for litigation based on Health & Safety issues in this country. It is not difficult to envisage a scenario in which a petite woman is provided with a set of weights more suited to a hefty male, tears a muscle, ricks her back or otherwise damages herself and then sues the trainer and the health club for failing to follow health and safety procedures.
It would be a delicious irony if any such failure were to be cancelled out by the trainer's strict adherence to the letter of the Equalities Act.

Dereliction of duty?

English Common Law holds that we all, whether as individuals or as members of an organisation, have a Duty of Care to others irrespective of whether they are known to us or not.
This being the case, I find it hard to understand why someone has not brought ministers and senior Civil Servants in the Ministry of Defence to book over the number of service personnel killed by mines and IEDs in Afghanistan. Warnings about the inadequacy of the kit that army personnel have to put up with are as old as the campaign itself. Yet, every day we hear horror stories of troops forced to patrol in Snatch land Rovers designed for use in Ulster, inadequate body armour or faulty or missing mine detection equipment.
The latest inquest on the deaths of the first female soldier and three SAS TA troopers reinforces the point that someone, within the MOD or the military, sent these young people out on patrol knowing full well they did not have the right equipment to protect them from harm. They travelled in a Snatch Land Rover - christened the mobile coffin because of its total unsuitability for conditions in Afghanistan - with only one working mine detection system and a bare minimum of training or instruction on its use.
That is negligence of the highest order and a patent dereliction of duty of care. Yet, as we all know, none of the civil servants repsonsible for specifying, ordering and supplying this equipment will be blamed. Neither will any of the politicians, including Gordon Brown, whose parsimony towards the Armed Forces has been repaid with the loss of countless young lives.
His excursions to Afghanistan, clad in the very best body armour money can buy, are as fleeting as his encounters with the truth. He will still rise at at PM's questions, solemnly intone the list of the latest casualties, lie about the number of armoured cars he has actually allowed to be ordered and then resume his seat without a shred of shame or discomfort at the risks he has subjected our forces to thanks to his penny-pinching.
If I were a clever lawyer with any sort of a conscience I would have gone after him for breach of duty of care a long, long time ago. It may not succeed, but, at the very least, it would expose him to the kind of cross-examination on a public stage that he will never have to face in Parliament or through the media.

Harman - a clown without pity

If anyone read an earlier version of this, I apologize for the literals and grammatical errors. Some variety of English-hating gremlin seemed to have infected the text and seriously mangled it. I hope the version below - suitably edited - makes more sense. Of course, if it does not even though I have wrought my magic on it, I'm seriously buggered.
The Elephant

Whatever happens after the election, whichever of the two lookalike parties we are left with, the legacy of Labour's 13 years of mis-rule will haunt us for many years to come.
Of course, the greatest part of this legacy will be the lack of one. Gordon Brown has made sure of that, taking the fourth largest economy in the world and single-handedly transforming it into an economic basket case, scrabbling around in the dust with the likes of Greece.
He has taken whatever inheritance we thought we might have amassed and pissed it up the metaphorical wall ..
In this he has been aided and abetted by an acquiescent House of Commons that, apparently, did not mind what he did as long as its members could continue living like lword's bastards at our expense.
Then we have the various nonentities who have, theoretically, been in charge of UK energy policy down the years. I think there have been eight so far, although most have had so little impact that it's far easier to forget their names than to remember them .
At the end of the 90s, the UK was more or less self-sufficient in energy. There were clear signs that this happy state of affairs would not persist for too much longer but nothing so alarming that some foresight and sensible planning couldn'y mitigate.
Unfortunately. the response of the various Guardians of the energy portfolio was to turn their faces against the idea of anything as sensible as nuclear power and clean-burning coal fired plants and bet the house on renewables like wind turbines. As part of this inspired planning, they sold off the UK only contractor capable of designing and building a modern nuclear generator. The result is that we are now a net importer of energy, dependent on the likes of the French to build the new nuclear generating capacity we desperately need, the Russians to provide the gas we will have to burn in the interim simply to stay warm in winter and a gaggle of energy suppliers who use UK consumers to subsidise customers in their home markets in France and Germany. Their almost childish belief in hippy style, subsistence-level energy production will gnaw away at our fabric and our Exchequer long after Lord Adonis and Milliband Minor have left to write their memoirs.
And yet, neither of these two comes close to matching the corrosive influence of Harriet Harman on British society. She has infected us with a poison that we may never clear out of the national bloodstream, a steady, unrelenting drip of billious policies that has chipped away at our natural, instinctive tolerance.
Harman is frequently portrayed as a Joyce Grenfellesque character; slightly dotty but intrinsically decent and well-meaning for all that.
She is not. She is from the same old-money, new class warfare stable as Tony Benn, Michael Foot and the late but unlamented Tony Crosland: all of them people brought up with such a silver spoon in their mouth that they end up choking on it.
Just as Benn voluntarily diminished himself (from Viscount Stansgate To Sir Anthony Wedgwood Benn to Anthony Benn to plain old Tony Benn) so Harman has done the same; resolutely honing her estuary accent - complete with the occasional glottal stop - and acquiring a trade unionist husband to obscure her highly privileged background. But, despite these outward manifestations of ordinariness, she can not quite slough off the aristocratic mindset. Like her uncle, Lord Longford, she instinctively knows what is best for people and is determined to improve them, wHeth they want her to or not.
Thus, she is burying us in an avalanche of legislation to force us to be nicer to people she regards as in urgent need of her patronage and our money. Reflecting its creator, the new society she is creating will be fair only ona selective basis and only to those people Harman deems to be especially deserving; immigrants, assorted minorities, homosexuals and women.
It seems to have gone unnoticed by her that, without any prior intervention on her part, the UK was already one of the most tolerant societies in the world. That is part of the reason why people in their millions have tried - and frequently succeeded - to migrate here. The result of her ill-considered new law will be that this tolerance is stretched and tested to breaking point. Our fractured society might end up so badly broken that it can not be put back together again.
The latest tear in the fabric was reported today.
Children as young as five are being monitored and reported for hate crimes at school. Legions of right-on teachers, teaching assistants and ordinary parent are being encouraged to spy on and monitor their charges for any hint of racial, religious or gender bias.
Those found guilty will be placed on a Hate Criimes Register..
One of the first victims of this hateful snitches 'charter is a ten year old boy from Somerset who, in a playground tussle, referred to his opponent as a gay boy.
He is now, and presumably will be forever, tagged as a homophobes. That record will follow him through his educational career and, who knows, into his adult life. It might even affect his employment prospects.
In the modern UK, he would have been far better off taking the other boy to some wasteland, sexually abusing him and then battering him to death with some broken bricks as Venables and Thompson did to Jamie Bulger when they were the same age.
Mind you, he is not alone in being marked out in this way. According to one report, he is just one of 40,000 children whose names are being added to this hate crime record every year.
So, the country whose legal system is based on the simple precept that someone is innocent until proven guilty, has now convicted 40,000 young people of hate crimes without the benefit of any formal legal representation..
If this young lad - and others like him - grow up with a profound dislike of homosexuals, ethnic minorities and authority, Horrible Harman and her acolytes will be the only ones who will be surprised.

No representation without taxation

Peter Mandelson, AKA Lord Mandelson of Hartlepool and Foy and our esteemed Business Secretary, has been all over the media again today.
He is incensed with the fact that another Lord - Ashcroft of that ilk - has finally revealed that, although he is the biggest source of finance for the Conservatives, he is actually a non-dom. This may sound somewhat like a dyslexic prophyactic but all it really means is that he chooses to live somewhere other than the UK. Labour's beef with this is that Ashcroft does not pay tax - or at least not enough of it, to the UK exchequer. In a reverse of the colonial American principle of No taxation without representation, Mandelson thinks that, In Ashcroft's case,there should be no representation without taxation.
Fair enough, too, I am inclined to say. If Ashcroft wants to play a major part in determining who is going to rule this country he should at least live and suffer here along with the rest of us. But, if that is the rule we are going to apply then let's do so across  the board. At a stroke, we would eliminate all of the little apparatchiks in Brussels and Strasbourg who blight our existence with theior interminable rules and regulations Then, we would do away with any MEP's who are not actually UK domiciled. Next on the list would be professional nationalists like Sean Connery and Billy Connolly who choose to live in the sunshine but like to come back every now and again, to swan around and stick their noses into our domestic affairs. Last on the list would be Rupert Murdoch and the rest of his clan who probably have more clout than the rest of the above put together through their UK media empire. It is still likely that Sky News and the Sun will play a larger part in deciding who reigns over us in the future than Lord Ashcroft or Mandelson ever will.

Bully Boy Part 2 ( of many)

So, I was right. Gordon has let slip the dogs of jaw to make the rounds of TV and radio studios and denounce, disparage and generally destroy the reputation of Mrs Pratt, the founder and director of the Anti-Bullying at Work charity.
Mandelson has taken time off from the British Airways' strike, the closure of the Redcar blast furnace and the potential loss of thousands of jobs both will bring for the much more pressing job of saving Gordon's fat arse once more. If Mandy is to be believed, what we are dealing with is Tom of  Tom Brown's Schooldays rather than the book's fictional bully, Flashman.
Why, Gordon hasn't a vindictive bone in his body, cries Mandy. He helps old ladies across the street. He cries for Piers Morgan on TV. Why, he even lost an eye playing the manly sport of rugby when he was a teenager. ( Oh sorry, we've used that one before, haven't we?)
We know this must be so because, not just Mandy but the fragrant Sarah - Mrs Brown - has been ordered on to TV to say so. Even old putty face, John Prescott has been persuaded to stop buffing Pauline's shoes with his tongue long enough to testify to Gordon's sweetness of nature.
In fact, it was all going swimmingly from Nu labour's point of view. The Conservatives had been forced onto the back foot. Mrs Pratt was wavering and shilly-shallying and the news hounds had started to close in on her as if she were an exhausted vixen.
With Press focus switched from Brown to Pratt - or should that be from prat to Pratt -  the image of the bully boy was being suitably refurbished  when, blow me, Alastair Darling decided this was the perfect moment to tuck into a nice cold dish of revenge. Good old, lap-dog Alastair turned on his master without raising a hackle or a hair. Gently but firmly, he let it be known that Brown's official press liaison staff had briefed against him when he had ha the temerity to say that the UK could be facing its worst recession for sixty years.
What he precisely said was that Number 10.had unleashed the forces of hell against him.
That put Mr Brown in a rare old pickle. 
If he admitted condoning the attack, it would be ample proof of his bullying tendencies. On the other hand, if he denied -  which he did- any knowledge of the attack people would infer that his staff were so out of control that they were able to go off and savage whomsoever they pleased without even having to ask their so-called boss. Neither scenario does much for Mr Brown's carefully-cultivated image of omniscience.
Brown attempted to solve this problem by having Darling sit next to him during PM's Questions and there the pair of them sat, cooing to each other like a couple off old turtle doves in blue serge suits.
Not surprisingly, David Cameron made a great deal of hay while he was able. Darling, for his part, looked like the turtle dove who had snagged a particularly fat worm while Brown did a passable impression of the worm.
In another part of the building, Gus O'Donnell, who had previously denied giving Brown a dressing down for his bullying ways, finally had to admit that he had, in fact, provided the PM with some gentle instruction in the art of employee relations.
For those who query whether or not it is at all important or, indeed, relevant to modern society whether Brown is a bully or not, the answer is yes.
Bullying in and of itself is unattractive. Generally, it is accompanied by another trait that is equally unattractive; cowardice. Over the last few years, Brown has demonstrated a real talent for both.
At this juncture, faced with economic meltdown, involved in a war in Afghanistan and with the Argentinians starting to rattle our cage over the Falklands, do we really want a prevaricating coward in charge of the nation's  affairs?

Bully boy Brown

Gordon Brown is centre-stage once more; although, this time, not necessarily enjoying the limelight. After last week's tear-jerker with that media equivalent of a rent boy, Piers Morgan, Gordon and his advisers must have hoped they had found a potentially rich vein of ore to mine; a previously-unremarked capacity for public lachrimosity prompting a two to three point jump in the polls.
Now, some little upstart called Rawnsley has gone and spolit the whole fiction by raising the spectre of Gordon as Gorgon ( gender non-specific, in this case) once again. The image that Andrew Rawnsley paints in Sunday's Observer is of a man of such towering ego but so little real self-esteem that he can only function by beating - metaphorically of course -everyone around him into meek submission. Aides are flayed, secretaries man-handled ( sorry Harriet, I mean of course person-handled) and coffee cups thrown in hissy fits. When Gordon was a young socialist, dissidents were the flavour of the day . But they were Russian and safely ensconced in some far away Gulag. These days, any dissent inside the bunker at Number 10, provokes the same response in  our Gordon as it does in Sir Alex Ferguson. Except, in Gorgon's case any scorching is more likely to be done with a one-eyed stare than a hair-dryer.
When Gordon wants someone's opinion, he feels most comfortable  providing them with it, first.
This is not the only time that Brown has been portrayed as a bullying oaf. Similar rumours swirled around him when he was at the Treasury. Just as nicotine stubbornly clings to a smoker's jacket, the same rumours resolutely adhere to him now. Most recently, a former Blair aide spoke about his "volcanic" temper and almost childlike tantrums when events or people didn't pan out exactly as he wanted them to. Alastair Campbell is famously credited with labelling Brown, then Chancellor, as "psychologically flawed".
Now, it is an independent journalist who has characterised him as such a self-regarding bully that he has been shown a yellow card by Gus O'Donnell, the Cabinet Secretary and Head of the Civil Service, concerned about the effect of Brown's tantrums on his staff.
The rumours and stories of Gorgon's bullying ways are so persistent that they are hard to ignore. The sense that there is more than a grain of truth in them is given added substance by the way that labour's big guns were immediately deployed to counter the accusations.
Peter Mandelson made the obligatory trip to Andrew Marr's Sunday show, where he attempted to make light of the charges by referring to his own disagreements with Brown. He didn't deny them outright but deflected them with all the skill of a batsman turning a ball to fine leg.
It's a technique that he uses often. Instead of tackling anything head on he changes the emphasis by
1.  implying that, even if they were true, they are all part of the healthy give-and-take expected between adult politicians conducting the country's affairs, or
2. acknowledging that there might be some truth but all that does is emphasise the tough, unrelenting devotion to duty of our beloved Gordon in steering the great ship of state.
Of course, irrespective of his many faults, Peter M can run rings around any of the current crop of so-called political inquisitors and Marr is no exception.
Temporarily, at least, some of the flames had been quenched.
They were then fanned by revelations by an anti-bullying- at-work charity that people working within Number 10 had contacted the said charity for counselling, because of the intimidating atmospher in which they had to work.
It turns out that that the person running the charity could also be aTory activist. This fact has been immediately siezed upon by Mandelson and other Nu-Labour attack dogs to divert attention from the main story - that Brown is a sociopathic bully - to the political affiliation - and therefore motives - of the charity boss. 
Many of Mandelson's media groupies are already puffing this side of the story and, given Cameron's painful inability to exploit any major news break to his or his party's advantage, it will probably be the main theme by the end of this week.
However, it will not obscure the fact that Brown is a bully. This story, or another very like it, will surface again some time in the near future.
Just as leopards find it very difficult to change their spots, so bullies, by their very nature, are rarely able to develop into fully-fledged human beings. Brown is so convinced of his own rightness that anyone who disagrees or demurs must, by definition, be wrong.
It is therefore his bounden duty to put that person right.
Should this involve a little over-enthusiastic brow-beating, well no one ever made an omellette without first bashing one or two eggs, did they?

Unnatural justice

One of the defining characteristics of Great Britain has always been a natural affinity with justice and fair play.Not the sort of justice that we associate with the bewigged denizens of Planet Zog who populate the upper levels of our judiciary. That is designed primarily to shield their upper class mates from the prying eyes and cameras of the popular Press.
You won't find the sort of justice I have in mind entombed in a law book so densely worded that you have to employ a specialist in arcane language - a lawyer to you and me - to interpret it. Generally, it comes through in the actions of ordinary people who have an instinctive appreciation of what is right and wrong.
Three recent stories highlight the disconnect between the great mass of people,our political and judicial elites and the concept of Natural Justice.
The first is the so-called revelation that Labour has deliberately pursued an open-door immigration policy not - as they kept reassuring a sceptical population - for the economic benefit of the country but for the much more narrow purpose of changing the cultural complexion of Great Britain while, coincidentally broadening their client and voter base.  Where have our so-called political journalsists and commentators been for the last ten years?
As I wrote as long ago as November 2007:
"There are certain areas of Great Britain that have always voted Labour and will always go on voting Labour - whether the old or the New variety - because every wave of economic success passes them by. Equally, there are bastions of Tory support which catch all the waves for the simple reason that they create them in the first place. Noo Labour knows this. No matter how pathetic they may be as administrators, the Blairs, Mandelsons and Browns of this world understand politics. Equally, they know that the more prosperous people become, the more conservative ( with a small c) they tend to become in their habits. Owning a property in common with a bank has a way of concentrating the mind and stimulating an interest in economics that may have, hitherto, lain hidden. Consequently, with the British economy enjoying the longest sustained growth in living memory, more and more people have climbed onto the property ladder and, thus, have also taken the first, tentative steps towards small c conservatism. In fact, all that has limited the numbers jumping aboard the property bandwagon has been the astronomical inflation of house prices. ( One of the Laws of Unintended Consequences that we can discuss at a later date).

So, here's a conundrum. We ( Noo Labour) naturally want the country to be prosperous because it enhances our prospects for re-election. On the other hand, the better off the country becomes, the further away from our core values the electorate moves. This is particularly true in the engine room of the economy, in the South East where home ownership is at its highest; as is, surprise surprise, the level of support for the wretched Tory party. Even more worrying is the fact that the benefits of the economic miracle are also being enjoyed in our traditional working class heartlands where the same shift towards middle class values is clearly discernible. There are only so many times we can move to the right to maintain our appeal to "Middle England" before we alienate the Unions and there are only so many new government jobs we can create. So, where else can we look for the voting fodder we need to win the next election and keep ourselves in a manner to which we have become rapidly accustomed? The answer, my friends, lies some where else in a place known as Abroad.
Let us welcome the huddled masses, yearning to be free that the US, Australia, Canada, South Africa and most of the developed world - and virtually the whole of Europe, apart from Sweden - don't wany darkening their doorsteps. Let's remove all border controls and issue entry visas as if they were library tickets. If people swarm in illegally, let's pretend that we hadn't noticed even if, by doing so, we encourage slave labour in the form of Chinese cockle pickers or Romanian child prostitutes. We'll claim to be building a truly multi-cultural society. If people complain, we'll brand them racist. If they say we are destroying British culture, we'll label them Little Englanders. And, if they persist with their protests, we'll introduce a raft of new laws that make it illegal for them to do so. We'll deny, cavill, argue and prevaricate while, all the while, encouraging the largest continuous migration in British history. Because, while the rest of the country looks on the newcomers as immigrants, foreigners and threats to their jobs we see them in a totally different light. To us, this multi-coloured rainbow of cultures and religions represents the future. Our future, handed to us on an electoral plate by hordes of grateful Poles, Somalis, Albanians and Slovaks so different in their origins but united by one pure and beautiful emotion; undying gratitude to the party that gave them the keys to the Kingdom."
This week, we also  learnt that all three main parties are considering some sort of charge or levy on old people to help fund them if they have to end their days in a care home of some sort In the case of Labour, we are apparently looking at a post-mortem tax of £20,000 on individual estates. While the Tories have cavilled at this figure, they are, themselves, suggesting a voluntary contribution of around £8000 for a post-retirement insurance scheme to fund old age care. As` usual,the LibDems don't seem to have formulated a policy so far.
Whichever way you slice it, all of these elite politicians seem to feel that it is perfectly in order for someone to work and pay taxes for thirty to forty years and then, at the very moment when they should be enjoying the fruits of honesty, hard work and civic responsibility, for the government to insert a large mitt into their back pocket and extract a substantial sum of money. There are two problems with this policy of course and the biggest is that it flies in the face of any idea of natural justice. The only people to whom it can apply are, by definition, those who have managed to work regularly,save for and buy their own home over the course of their lifetime. People who have been feckless,lazy, unambitious or simply uninterested in owning a property will, obviously, be unable to participate in this scheme. But, since we all have Human Rights, it is a fair bet that they will still be eligible for the same levels of care and consideration irrespective of any lack of tangible assets. So,they will escape the legalised larceny of the Government while enjoying exactly the same benefits as those robbed at the cashpoint.
Is this fair? NO. Is it in any sense just? Not by any stretch of the imagination.
Is there a politician who will articulate the basic injustice being proposed? Not one enjoying any sort of influence in the three main parties.

Which brings us to the final hackle-raising story of the week.
While our politicians are debating not whether to rob the old of part of their life savings but precisely how much to steal, they apparently have no difficulty finding the funds to house, feed and clothe someone whose apparent entitlement to help and assistance would, at first blush, appear to eb tenuous at best.
For while we cannot, as a nation, find it in our collective heart to make the last days of our old folk warm, comfortable and secure without their coughing up a substantial chunk of change, we do not have the same problems when it comes to funding a millionaire lifestyle for a single mother with six children.
Esma Marjam hails from the Midlands where her ex-husband is a solicitor or some similar bastion of middle class respectability. Despite this fact, she and her six children have all ended up living in council accommodation in London. Not in Tower Hamlets. Not in Brixton. Not even in Peckham, Kilburn, Brent,  Lewisham,Ealing or Islington. No, the Marjam family, for some reason that isn't made clear, has elected to make the area administered by the City of Westminster its base. Until recently, they managed to scrape by in an ordinary 3 bedroomed council house. For some reason, which again is not made really clear, Ms Marjam decided that this was inadequate for her growing brood. When Westminster Council dragged its feet in finding the right sort of accommodation, she decided to go online and find something suitable herself.
What she came up with was a seven bed mansion not a boundary throw from Lords Cricket Ground in St. John's Wood. And what a snip,it has turned out to be. All Westminster Council - or to be more precise the unwitting Council Tax payers of that Borough - has to find to put a roof over the Marjam family's heads is £7000 per month, or £84000 per annum.
But, of course, there's more to life than mere accommodation so the family also has to take an additional £1500 of taxpayers' money every month to scrape by. Taken all in, the Great British public is paying this woman and her brood the equivalent of a pre-tax salary of about £150,000 per year. In the meantime, the same politico-judicial elite is debating whether to force people who have paid taxes and National Insurance all their lives to pay a further £8000 to £20,000 for the privilege of being allowed to grow old gracefully.
Little wonder that people are starting to look around fro alternatives to the three main parties if this is their idea of natural justice.

Burnt at the stake

Stakeholder.
Now, there's a term you don't hear too often these days.
Not so long ago, oh say 18 months or so, it was impossible to avoid stakeholders. They were everywhere. Large government departments, local councils, charitable organisations, commercial institutions and giant industrial companies alike were stuffed to the gills with them. Rarely a week went by without some politician or CEO restating his or her total commitment to their stakeholders; be they shareholders, directors or just plain employees.

Mind, that was back then, when the world was young and bountiful, Jim; bankers were regularly lauded for their entrepreneurial skills and we spent our lives grazing on the sunlit uplands of plenty with limitless credit fuelling our consumption. You would have been hard pressed in those halcyon days to find a CEO who didn't regard his company as "A people company".

All that has changed. The economic storms swirling around the global markets apparently bore within them  gases so lethal to stakeholders that they wiped them from the face of the earth at a stroke.
How else can we explain their sudden disappearance? 
The term stakeholder has been expunged, ripped from the lexicon in case it rears up and bites its previous champions on the bum. CEOs are no longer interested in stakeholders but shareholders and shareholder value.

The problem is, of course, that the label stakeholder implies that someone is much more than just an employee, that , individually and as part of the collective, they are an essential cog in the corporate machine. Like many silly business expressions, it was devised by HR departments to give everyone a warm sense of belonging. But, it's a tough line to hold when you have to decimate a workforce and close a factory or two, when the only stake many employees would be interested in is one driven firmly into the CEO's heart.

In a recession, any stakeholders who are not actually shareholders become an embarassment, a potential drain on resources and a drag on the share price.  
That being the case, let's hope that we all learn to live with a simple truth. Companies generally, and quoted companies in particular, are not "People" companies. They are not a cross between a mutual society, a creche and a dating agency. They do not exist to provide financial support, sustenance and a really neat social life to their employees. They are money-generators, pure and simple. So, stakeholders are fine when markets are vibrant, sales are firm and the bottom line positively vibrates with health. But, they become a liability when business goes down the toilet. Then they revert to being plain employees, a Human Resource to be sure but one that, like any resource, is dispensable and replenishable.

So, no more twee expressions. Let's talk no more of Stakeholders or People Companies. When the sun comes back up again, let's close the HR department, go back to an old fashioned personnel officer, sack the consultants who specialise in devising silly expressions and give the money we save to more productive employees. Then if they really want to become stakeholders, they can buy themselves a genuine stake in the company in the form of shares.