No self-respecting, self-important blogger can let the assassination of Osama Bin Laden go by without spending even just a minute or two pontificating, but I’m sure if you are interested, you’ll will already know all the relevant stuff, so what is there that I might usefully add? And if you are not interested, you have, by this point already stopped reading and wandered off looking for your porn mag (or knitting patterns, depending upon your gender).
I have only skimmed the papers and listened to just over 30 minutes worth of analysis and prognosis on The World Tonight, so you probably know more than I do, and it should be you pontificating. But there is one detail which I haven’t heard alluded to and one suggestion which was made in passing which, if true, would also prove very interesting.
Bin Laden was living in a ‘mansion’ in a compound surrounded by ‘12ft high walls’, which didn’t have either a telephone line running in or an internet connection. (So how did he manage to keep in touch with his pals on Facebook, I wonder, but that must keep for another time.) One Pakistani speaker on the radio (I think it was a former deputy chief of the Pakistani air force) made the point that describing the house Bin Laden was killed in as a ‘mansion’ over-eggs the pudding rather and that the house was a far more modest affair, and judging by the one photo I have seen of the place, I think he has a point. If that house was a ‘mansion’ with all the comfort and convenience that ‘mansion’ implies, I shan’t be shooting off to Pakistan to buy a mansion at any time soon.
Furthermore, this ‘mansion’ was in Abbottabad, which has been described as the Pakistani West Point or Sandhurst and which was home to more Pakistani army types, both in active service and retired. It would seem pretty obvious, given the city’s importance, that either the Pakistani army or the secret service or both knew he was there. In fact, it is impossible to believe they didn’t. And that means there might be some substance to one of the intriguing claims made on the radio tonight, namely that the Pakistani government had actually got hold of Bin Laden at some point in the past and that he was being held by Pakistan as some kind of bargaining chip in any future dealings with the U.S.
Now obviously I have absolutely no way of knowing just how true that is or not, but the claim does have the virtue of explaining why the man was apparently holed up somewhere right under the noses of both the army and the secret service. If the claim is true, it would also be interesting to know what degree of freedom he had.
The second point is that, given the importance of Abbottabad as Pakistan’s ‘West Point/Sandhurst’ and given the degree of control the army and the secret service have in Pakistan, it strikes me as very odd indeed that the US Navy Seals met apparently met absolutely no resistance whatsoever. The report I read described them as arriving in three helicopters, ordering over loudspeakers everyone to go indoors and stay there and then attacking the compound. Would there have been no reaction whatsoever from Pakistani forces in the city? Would not Pakistan’s air force have detected the three helicopters as they made their way to Abbottabad from a base said to be 30 miles away? You would have thought so, but apparently there was no reaction at all. And that would imply that elements in the army – and, furthermore, elements who had the upper hand in the army – gave their tacit approval to the mission. Yet we are told that the U.S. didn’t inform Pakistan for fear of a leak. So the second explanation would seem to be more likely: that the army and the secret service were, on this occasion, pretty bloody useless. But that doesn’t ring true either.
As always, a clearer picture of what really went on will be revealed over the next few years. The Sunday Times, of course, will pretend to have the whole story by next Sunday and will print it, complete with the kind of lurid Boys’ Own graphics it has made its own. I know the Mail is going to town on the matter, and it, too, has penchant for that kind of illustration. But none of these immediate accounts are worth the paper they are printed on, and we really must wait a long time before we get to know the full story, if we ever do.
UPDATE: The news this morning was full of denials that the Pakistan government knew anything about Bin Laden being a local lad in Abbottabad and very popular in the corner shop (‘He always had a smile and was only too happy to spend a few minutes chatting. Lovely man. He was particularly fond Patak’s samsosas, mind they are good, and we sell quite a few, more than any other brand I should think.’) And I don’t doubt that Gilani and his cronies were kept well out of the loop, being regarded by the army, the secret service and most other people of consequence as worse than useless. But it still defies credulity (©John Humphrys) that the army knew nothing about the his presence locally, not just more or less next door to the army college, but next door to the secret service HQ. (Yes, I know Pakistan, like every other country, has more than one 'secret service', but let's not split hairs, please. It's so unseemly.) I mean surely to goodness they would all bump into each other when they were out getting their morning paper?
The reason given for the US Navy bods being able to fly 30 miles to attack the compound is that they ‘flew below the radar’. Well, I suppose it’s possible. In fact, given the insistence (they say) that no one in the Pakistan military knew, it is more probable than not. Yet, I still find it hard to credit. Would Uncle Sam really have been able to fly in 40 armed men 30 miles without being detected?
. . .
The picture at the top of this page was taken last week when there was glorious weather in Cornwall. It is on the back road leading down to Tresarrett from the A30. I like it a lot. It was taken on my mobile phone, but the quality isn’t half bad. It will remain there all summer, but I have decided to replace it in the autumn with a more autumnal piccy. The colour of the title has been changed to yellow because red didn’t show up very well. Incidentally, I should like to confirm that I cleared all these changes first with the White House, the Pentagon and Langley, and they gave me the go-ahead. It might seem an odd thing to do (to get permission) but, you know, as the raid on Bin Laden’s ‘mansion’ has shown, it does pay to be circumspect.
. . .
I realised that Bin Laden is – was, I suppose, would now be more correct – regarded as a mass murdering terrorist bastard but he wasn’t completely evil. Before he found Allah, he was living a playboy lifestyle here in London, courtesy of his father’s millions. And, would you believe it, he was an avid supporter of Arsenal FC. I know that sounds like the usual bullshit I come out with, but it happens to be true. So the question is: did he hear the score of last Sunday’s match between Arsenal and Manchester United? For a change, Arsenal beat United (1-0) and being an avid fan he would have been very chuffed. He might even have breathed his last with a smile on his face. Unlikely, but possible.
Monday 2 May 2011
Tuesday 26 April 2011
Oh, Andrew, what a fine set of principles.
A while ago I mentioned so-called super-injunctions taken out by those with the necessary loot to hire expensive lawyers, which not only deny all mention of a certain matter, but even forbid any mention that the injunction has been taken out. Super-injunctions were back in the news again recently after two actors and a football player had been playing away from home and didn’t want their public to find out, but the matter took quite a dramatic twist over these past few days with the announcement by one man who had taken out a super-injunction that he now thought the trend was a danger to freedom of speech. It was that lovely Andrew Marr, a darling of the bien pensant left-of-centre who is married to the Guardian journalist Jackie Ashley.
I am not Marr’s greatest fan,and when he hosts his Monday morning radio show Start The Week, I can’t help but hear a great deal of self-satisfaction in his voice. Marr’s announcenment was the big news yesterday morning and at first blush is seemed as though a principled man who had once demonstrated a little weakness had rediscovered his princples and the world was once again a grander place. Unfortunately, that wasn’t true.
When Marr took out his super-injunction – and I repeat that they are not cheap – the talk was that he had done so because he wanted to protect his children, specifically that he and his wife Jackie, both stalwarts of the left, had chosen to send their children to a private school and they didn’t relish the great unwashed finding out. That, it now appears, was just so much nonsense.
In fact, Marr did not want the world to know that he had had an affair with a fellow journalist and had fathered a child out of wedlock. That fellow journalist was Alice Miles, of The Times.
Strictly, under the terms of the super-injunction, I and everyone else is forbidden from revealing her name, but for one thing the affair between Marr and Miles was common knowledge in the ‘Westminster Village’ - Miles was then working as a Lobby correspondent – and, anyway, her name had already been publicised on January 18, 2008 (more than three years ago) in the blog by Guido Fawkes. So if I end up in the Tower for mentioni
ng her name – or more likely am landed with a huge fine for contempt of court – it would be interesting to know why Guido wasn’t similarly taken to task three years ago or any of the other cyber pillocks who have been plastering the good lady’s name all over the net with gay abandon.
In the event Marr came clean overnight from Sunday to Monday and ‘his people’ — whoever they were, somone a little more upmarket than Max Cliffored, I suspect — managed to put a reasonable gloss on the affair. It was put about that Marr – a principled man, we must remind ourselves, a man of the left who, we can be certain knows wrong from right and who was merely guilty of one slip - was becoming increasingly uncomfortable with the whole idea of the rich and wealthy being able to hide their dirty little secrets, while the rest of us poor schmucks could do nothing of the kind. That, too, it turned out is just so much nonsense.
What had happened was that Ian Hislop, the editor of Private Eye, was becoming increasingly sickened that Marr, who has a prominent Sunday morning political show in which he interviews politicians, could take them to task for irregularities in their private lives while he had ensured that his own dirty little secret was kept well hidden.
The technical term for this kind of behaviour is hypocrisy.
Private Eye is not a wealthy publication but Hislop decided to use some of its shekels to hire an expensive lawyer and challenge Marr’s super-injunction. At some point Marr will have realised that the game was up (I don’t yet know what the outcome was of Hislop’s legal challenge was i.e. whether or not it succeeded), so, no doubt on the advice of ‘his people’ decided to come clean and put as good a gloss on the whole messy business as soon as possible. What better way than to insist that his liberal conscience had got the better of him and that — bugger the consequences — right must prevail: super-injunctions are evil. What a shame that his conscience didn’t seem to stir until he realised his behaviour was about to ensure he would be regarded as one of the biggest shits in town.
By the way, the one detail of this whole affair which amuses me most is that after Miles gave birth to the daughter Marr thought was his, and after he had confessed all to his wife, he agreed – principled chap that he was – to pay child maintenance. It has now emerged that Marr is not the father – Miles was a little more generous with her favours than he thought she was. And so Marr now wants his money back. Now that one should run and run. Miles doesn’t some out if this at all well, either. She knew she was screwing other chaps — I assume, she wasn’t asleep while the deeds were being done — and she will have known that it might be possible Marr wasn't the daddy. But did she tell him of her doubts? Apparently not.
Oh, and in view of his crusade to nail a hypocrite I do hope Hislop hasn’t got any skeletons in his cupboard. For as sure as eggs is eggs they are just bound to come out.
. . .
In his blog, Guido Fawkes makes the point that those truly guilty of hypocrisy on an industrial scale are all those hacks, both broadcasting and print, who knew all about the affair, but kept schtumm. It seems that in some matters dog thinks twice about biting dog. Perhaps at the end of the day those hacks put a greater value on self-preservation.
I am not Marr’s greatest fan,and when he hosts his Monday morning radio show Start The Week, I can’t help but hear a great deal of self-satisfaction in his voice. Marr’s announcenment was the big news yesterday morning and at first blush is seemed as though a principled man who had once demonstrated a little weakness had rediscovered his princples and the world was once again a grander place. Unfortunately, that wasn’t true.
When Marr took out his super-injunction – and I repeat that they are not cheap – the talk was that he had done so because he wanted to protect his children, specifically that he and his wife Jackie, both stalwarts of the left, had chosen to send their children to a private school and they didn’t relish the great unwashed finding out. That, it now appears, was just so much nonsense.
In fact, Marr did not want the world to know that he had had an affair with a fellow journalist and had fathered a child out of wedlock. That fellow journalist was Alice Miles, of The Times.
Strictly, under the terms of the super-injunction, I and everyone else is forbidden from revealing her name, but for one thing the affair between Marr and Miles was common knowledge in the ‘Westminster Village’ - Miles was then working as a Lobby correspondent – and, anyway, her name had already been publicised on January 18, 2008 (more than three years ago) in the blog by Guido Fawkes. So if I end up in the Tower for mentioni
ng her name – or more likely am landed with a huge fine for contempt of court – it would be interesting to know why Guido wasn’t similarly taken to task three years ago or any of the other cyber pillocks who have been plastering the good lady’s name all over the net with gay abandon.In the event Marr came clean overnight from Sunday to Monday and ‘his people’ — whoever they were, somone a little more upmarket than Max Cliffored, I suspect — managed to put a reasonable gloss on the affair. It was put about that Marr – a principled man, we must remind ourselves, a man of the left who, we can be certain knows wrong from right and who was merely guilty of one slip - was becoming increasingly uncomfortable with the whole idea of the rich and wealthy being able to hide their dirty little secrets, while the rest of us poor schmucks could do nothing of the kind. That, too, it turned out is just so much nonsense.
What had happened was that Ian Hislop, the editor of Private Eye, was becoming increasingly sickened that Marr, who has a prominent Sunday morning political show in which he interviews politicians, could take them to task for irregularities in their private lives while he had ensured that his own dirty little secret was kept well hidden.
The technical term for this kind of behaviour is hypocrisy.
Private Eye is not a wealthy publication but Hislop decided to use some of its shekels to hire an expensive lawyer and challenge Marr’s super-injunction. At some point Marr will have realised that the game was up (I don’t yet know what the outcome was of Hislop’s legal challenge was i.e. whether or not it succeeded), so, no doubt on the advice of ‘his people’ decided to come clean and put as good a gloss on the whole messy business as soon as possible. What better way than to insist that his liberal conscience had got the better of him and that — bugger the consequences — right must prevail: super-injunctions are evil. What a shame that his conscience didn’t seem to stir until he realised his behaviour was about to ensure he would be regarded as one of the biggest shits in town.
By the way, the one detail of this whole affair which amuses me most is that after Miles gave birth to the daughter Marr thought was his, and after he had confessed all to his wife, he agreed – principled chap that he was – to pay child maintenance. It has now emerged that Marr is not the father – Miles was a little more generous with her favours than he thought she was. And so Marr now wants his money back. Now that one should run and run. Miles doesn’t some out if this at all well, either. She knew she was screwing other chaps — I assume, she wasn’t asleep while the deeds were being done — and she will have known that it might be possible Marr wasn't the daddy. But did she tell him of her doubts? Apparently not.
Oh, and in view of his crusade to nail a hypocrite I do hope Hislop hasn’t got any skeletons in his cupboard. For as sure as eggs is eggs they are just bound to come out.
. . .
In his blog, Guido Fawkes makes the point that those truly guilty of hypocrisy on an industrial scale are all those hacks, both broadcasting and print, who knew all about the affair, but kept schtumm. It seems that in some matters dog thinks twice about biting dog. Perhaps at the end of the day those hacks put a greater value on self-preservation.
Saturday 23 April 2011
My Easter message
I am a cradle Catholic which means, as only cradle Catholics will understand, that as far as the RC church is concerned they have got me for life. The theory is that we who were born and baptised Catholics might at some point in our lives renounce ‘the faith’ and we might well renounce ‘the faith’ for quite some time, - the Church is quite understanding, even forgiving in theses matters - but beneath it all, when all is said and done, we are still RCs, and rather like lost lambs might eventually find our way back to the fold. The important point is that as far as ‘Mother Church’ is concerned we have no choice in the matter. It is our destiny. Even what I write here will, as far as the true RC believers will tell themselves, be nothing but proof that I have ‘lost the way’ and that with a good deal of prayer I will find ‘my way back’ to Mother Church.
It might comes as no surprise to some of you that Stalin, when he was still known as Joseph Jughashvilli (I understand the spelling varies according to how much vodka you have had to drink) trained to be a Georgian Orthodox priest and it is not too much of a stretch of the imagination that he learnt much of his murderous methodology from the church. Although the various flavours of the Russian Orthodox church might have very little in common with Vatican’s Roman Catholicism and want very little to do with the Vatican’s Roman Catholicism, it will not have been lost on either variety that once you have convinced someone that their destiny is in God’s hand and that you, as God’s representative on Earth, call the shots, there is not a great deal they can do. It is a crude but very effective form of brainwashing. That seems to be a lesson Stalin learnt. Make them ‘love’ you, and they will do anything for you, even kill those who don’t ‘love’ you.
I write this now, late on Saturday night (here in Britain) and on the eve of the Christian churches most important annual feast day, because despite being ‘lost to the church’ and despite thinking that a great deal of what it ‘teaches’ is just some much hooey, that it’s not quite as simple as that. For in my own very private and very obscure way I have ‘a faith in God’. But I do not believe that the historical figure of Jesus Christ was ‘God’ or the ‘son of God’ or in any way divine. I believe that he was born, had brothers and sisters, married and shat just like most of us. I believe that he was a devout Jew, more devout than many, that he belonged to the Nazarene sect whose aims were twofold: to purify the Jewish faith and to rid Palestine (or whatever the Jews regarded as their home) of the occupying Roman forces. I believe that there were quite a few chuntering around that neck of the woods believing themselves to be ‘the Messiah’. I also believe that the church’s central figure of ‘Christ’ was wholly a creation of St Paul, aka Saul of Tarsus, who cobbled together a Christian myth from all sorts of sources. James, Jesus’s brother rumbled Saul quiet early on and wanted very little to do with him.
I must admit that the beliefs I have listed above are not based on thorough and deep research but upon merely reading two books (well three, really, but I’ll come to that later on). They are A N Wilson’s Jesus: A Biography and the one rather provocatively entitled Jesus: The Terrorist about which I have written before. And I must also admit that I have laid myself wide open to any number of criticisms by saying as much. I should, though, in fairness to myself add that my convictions also lean on my life experience and what, at 61, I know of humankind. The third book was one I read over 40 years ago and of which I remember very little. It was written Hugh Schonfield and called The Passover Plot, and no doubt it, too, is decried by the wise men of the Vatican as just another potboiling piece of shit. Which is fine by me as I can’t remember the first thing about what I read in it.
So that’s me having put the RC church and ‘cradle catholics’ in their place. But I should also like to add that, within reason, whatever the faith, I think it is better to have a faith than not. In that respect there is nothing that distinguishes Christians form Muslims from Hindus from Buddhists from Zoroastrians from - the list is infinite. You might even include humanists. In their very modern and oh so enlightened way they might deny vehemently that they are ‘a faith’ and the more militant humanists might even consider calling in their very expensive lawyers and suing for libel. But, sorry chaps and chappesses, you might not have ‘a God’ but as far as I am concerned you are a faith.
What is most intriguing is that however much these different faiths disagree and however much they feel the need to kill each other, fundamentally their principles are identical: love thy neighbour and all that entails and acknowledge that there is something greater than humankind (call it God, Allah, Jahveh or whatever you like – just don’t pretend he/she/it doesn’t exist). Oh, and there’s more to life than gold and silver.
At the end of the day I don’t give a flying fuck whether the RCs believe I am reclaimable, benighted, misguided, ‘lost’ or anything else. That is no longer my problem. John Hume observed that ‘man created God in his own image’, and that about sums it up. I am grateful to ‘Mother Church’ for whatever good it passed on to me, but I like to think that one of those things is to be honest with oneself, and whatever my conscience tells me will remain between me and my conscience (which is, by the way, a cynical little toad). I am no longer a Roman Catholic. I don’t believe that Jesus Christ was in any way divine. But I do believe that I am nothing without other people and I do believe that in our hearts all of us – all of us, even those who think they are the worst of the worst – know what is right and what is not right. And I pray that each and every one of us can find the strength in ourselves to do the right thing by others. It would sound horribly wishy-washy to end this particular rant with an exhortation to love one another, so I shall put it another way: don’t be too hard on the schmuck who has just cut in on you. And maybe he won’t be too hard on you.
So, a happy Easter break to you all.
It might comes as no surprise to some of you that Stalin, when he was still known as Joseph Jughashvilli (I understand the spelling varies according to how much vodka you have had to drink) trained to be a Georgian Orthodox priest and it is not too much of a stretch of the imagination that he learnt much of his murderous methodology from the church. Although the various flavours of the Russian Orthodox church might have very little in common with Vatican’s Roman Catholicism and want very little to do with the Vatican’s Roman Catholicism, it will not have been lost on either variety that once you have convinced someone that their destiny is in God’s hand and that you, as God’s representative on Earth, call the shots, there is not a great deal they can do. It is a crude but very effective form of brainwashing. That seems to be a lesson Stalin learnt. Make them ‘love’ you, and they will do anything for you, even kill those who don’t ‘love’ you.
I write this now, late on Saturday night (here in Britain) and on the eve of the Christian churches most important annual feast day, because despite being ‘lost to the church’ and despite thinking that a great deal of what it ‘teaches’ is just some much hooey, that it’s not quite as simple as that. For in my own very private and very obscure way I have ‘a faith in God’. But I do not believe that the historical figure of Jesus Christ was ‘God’ or the ‘son of God’ or in any way divine. I believe that he was born, had brothers and sisters, married and shat just like most of us. I believe that he was a devout Jew, more devout than many, that he belonged to the Nazarene sect whose aims were twofold: to purify the Jewish faith and to rid Palestine (or whatever the Jews regarded as their home) of the occupying Roman forces. I believe that there were quite a few chuntering around that neck of the woods believing themselves to be ‘the Messiah’. I also believe that the church’s central figure of ‘Christ’ was wholly a creation of St Paul, aka Saul of Tarsus, who cobbled together a Christian myth from all sorts of sources. James, Jesus’s brother rumbled Saul quiet early on and wanted very little to do with him.
I must admit that the beliefs I have listed above are not based on thorough and deep research but upon merely reading two books (well three, really, but I’ll come to that later on). They are A N Wilson’s Jesus: A Biography and the one rather provocatively entitled Jesus: The Terrorist about which I have written before. And I must also admit that I have laid myself wide open to any number of criticisms by saying as much. I should, though, in fairness to myself add that my convictions also lean on my life experience and what, at 61, I know of humankind. The third book was one I read over 40 years ago and of which I remember very little. It was written Hugh Schonfield and called The Passover Plot, and no doubt it, too, is decried by the wise men of the Vatican as just another potboiling piece of shit. Which is fine by me as I can’t remember the first thing about what I read in it.
So that’s me having put the RC church and ‘cradle catholics’ in their place. But I should also like to add that, within reason, whatever the faith, I think it is better to have a faith than not. In that respect there is nothing that distinguishes Christians form Muslims from Hindus from Buddhists from Zoroastrians from - the list is infinite. You might even include humanists. In their very modern and oh so enlightened way they might deny vehemently that they are ‘a faith’ and the more militant humanists might even consider calling in their very expensive lawyers and suing for libel. But, sorry chaps and chappesses, you might not have ‘a God’ but as far as I am concerned you are a faith.
What is most intriguing is that however much these different faiths disagree and however much they feel the need to kill each other, fundamentally their principles are identical: love thy neighbour and all that entails and acknowledge that there is something greater than humankind (call it God, Allah, Jahveh or whatever you like – just don’t pretend he/she/it doesn’t exist). Oh, and there’s more to life than gold and silver.
At the end of the day I don’t give a flying fuck whether the RCs believe I am reclaimable, benighted, misguided, ‘lost’ or anything else. That is no longer my problem. John Hume observed that ‘man created God in his own image’, and that about sums it up. I am grateful to ‘Mother Church’ for whatever good it passed on to me, but I like to think that one of those things is to be honest with oneself, and whatever my conscience tells me will remain between me and my conscience (which is, by the way, a cynical little toad). I am no longer a Roman Catholic. I don’t believe that Jesus Christ was in any way divine. But I do believe that I am nothing without other people and I do believe that in our hearts all of us – all of us, even those who think they are the worst of the worst – know what is right and what is not right. And I pray that each and every one of us can find the strength in ourselves to do the right thing by others. It would sound horribly wishy-washy to end this particular rant with an exhortation to love one another, so I shall put it another way: don’t be too hard on the schmuck who has just cut in on you. And maybe he won’t be too hard on you.
So, a happy Easter break to you all.
Thursday 21 April 2011
The spell is broken: Auntie BBC hints that all might not be well with the EU
There was an interesting item on Radio 4’s Today this morning, interesting not necessarily in what it said, but that in a way it was a first of its kind.
I happen to be a ‘eurosceptic’ in that from my, possibly limited, knowledge of human behaviour and the history of European nations, I believe that the prospect of welding us all together into one joyous whole is just so much pie in the sky. (The less wise EU enthusiasts point to the United States of America and claim that if it can be done there it can be done here. They completely ignore that the genesis of the U.S. was wholly different in that the union evolved and that it was by no means painless given that the Civil War claim the lives of many hundreds of thousands. That’s why the wiser EU enthusiasts make no such comparison.)
The piece on the radio this morning, with, on the one side Karl Bildt, Sweden’s foreign minister, and on the other a eurosceptic called Derek Scott, who was Tony Blair’s economics advisor when Blair was PM, asked whether in the light of a variety of different problems faced by the EU, it could be seen to be slowly falling apart again. It isn’t just the eurozone crisis which is destabilising the EU, but real problems with the Schengen agreement and the growing popularity of anti-EU political parties. Scott, naturally, given his field of expertise, dealt mainly with the euro crisis and again highlighted its internal contradiction (which were pointed out by eurosceptics when the euro was launched) which mean a monetary mechanism intended to help the different EU economies to converge is, in fact, making them diverge.
The problems with the Schengen agreement, under which EU citizens are allowed to move between EU countries freely without check stem from the arrival in Italy of refugees from the troubles in North Africa, mainly Tunisia, who are then being allowed by Italy to move off into France (where, given France’s colonial history, they feel more at home). France, naturally, is crying foul, has said such refugees should be dealt with by the first EU country they enter and has again begun checking the documents of those arriving at its borders.
The rise of nationalist parties hostile to the EU has also carried on, with the electoral success of the True Finns in Finland. (I must be honest and admit I had never heard of the ‘True Finns’ until about three days ago, and perhaps you hadn’t either, but they are real and now have a sufficiently large number of MPs to be a force to be reckoned with in Finland.)
Here in Britain there have been quiet a few eurosceptics prophesying the imminent demise of the EU — it would be truer to say they have been praying for it — but until now they have largely belonged to the lunatic fringe of EU opponents and are rarely taken seriously by anyone but themselves. What was interesting about the Radio 4 piece and how it dealt with the possible slow disintegration of the EU was that it is anything but in the lunatic fringe of any movement, and given Auntie BBC’s usual chaste insistence on ‘balance’, I should imagine there was a small degree of soul-searching and ‘referring up’ before it was agreed the piece could be broadcast.
. . .
One other aspect of a possible slow disintegration of the EU alluded to by the piece was a growing North/South divide in Europe. The whole point about the EU, or one of them, was that ‘we are all in this together, the smallest member state is as important as the largest’ blah-blah, which was always a piece of idealistic fiction. The eternal dynamics of the group again came into play, as, of course, they had to, and the richer, stronger nations began to call the shots. Now we have a situation in which several of the Med EU states are in financial shit and the North EU states are being expected to bail them out, which is not going down at all well with the taxpayers of those North EU states. Now there’s a surprise.
What would happen if the EU were to ‘shrink’ again, to reconstitute itself into a smaller group of more responsible members? The first thing to say is that it simply wouldn’t happen like that, although there has been talk of a caucus being formed of all the stable eurozone economies within the eurozone. But I doubt whether the current crop of EU bigwigs would ever contemplate a situation where they would be left with a great deal of egg on their faces. It is more likely that they would carry on admiring the emperor’s new clothes until the time came for them to retire with their reputations and dignity intact on a fabulous pension, leaving a new crop off apparatchiks to clear up the mess.
And what of Greece, Portugal and Spain? It might be tactless to say so, but in historical terms they have all comparatively recently been dictatorships, and their reaction to economic adversity might not be the same as that of those EU states of a more calvinistic bent. Spain, the largest of the three, has a huge problem with youth unemployment, and the young tend to get restless rather faster than we old farts. I heard the BBC’s economics correspondent admit that other night that the question now being asked is not whether Greece will go bust, but when. Will Germans be happy to carry on shelling out more of their taxes to sustain Greece? All together now: No, of course they bloody won’t! But that is not what the EU idealists want to hear. They want to cling to the dream that ‘we’re all in this together, come hell or high water’.
A future problem for the EU is growing corruption in those member states which were once part of the Soviet bloc. Old habits die hard and the survival strategies employed when the communists were still in charge are proving to be just as lucrative these days under the evil EU empire (or something. That was a joke: I like to think I am NOT part of the anti-EU lunatic fringe). It seems this corruption is not, as one might think, restricted to former Soviet bloc states in the southern part of Europe, such as Romania and Bulgaria. The three Baltic members have also found that their politicians are finding it hard keeping their sticky fingers out of the till.
. . .
Then there’s the small matter of the EU’s request for an increase in its budget, and increase which is higher than eurozone inflation, so it’s not just a question of sitting tight until times is better, guv. So you really do have to ask whether the European Commission is firing on all cylinders or is, perhaps, not the teeniest bit out of touch. Well, it’s the latter, of course.
Whether of not an increase over an above inflation is warranted, you have to conclude that the EC is ineffably politically naive to make its demand at a time when the rest of Europe is being urged to tighten its belt, and the people of Greece, Ireland and Portugal have absolutely no choice in the matter. And do we really want such dumbos making decisions for us? That, by the way, is a rhetorical question.
I happen to be a ‘eurosceptic’ in that from my, possibly limited, knowledge of human behaviour and the history of European nations, I believe that the prospect of welding us all together into one joyous whole is just so much pie in the sky. (The less wise EU enthusiasts point to the United States of America and claim that if it can be done there it can be done here. They completely ignore that the genesis of the U.S. was wholly different in that the union evolved and that it was by no means painless given that the Civil War claim the lives of many hundreds of thousands. That’s why the wiser EU enthusiasts make no such comparison.)
The piece on the radio this morning, with, on the one side Karl Bildt, Sweden’s foreign minister, and on the other a eurosceptic called Derek Scott, who was Tony Blair’s economics advisor when Blair was PM, asked whether in the light of a variety of different problems faced by the EU, it could be seen to be slowly falling apart again. It isn’t just the eurozone crisis which is destabilising the EU, but real problems with the Schengen agreement and the growing popularity of anti-EU political parties. Scott, naturally, given his field of expertise, dealt mainly with the euro crisis and again highlighted its internal contradiction (which were pointed out by eurosceptics when the euro was launched) which mean a monetary mechanism intended to help the different EU economies to converge is, in fact, making them diverge.
The problems with the Schengen agreement, under which EU citizens are allowed to move between EU countries freely without check stem from the arrival in Italy of refugees from the troubles in North Africa, mainly Tunisia, who are then being allowed by Italy to move off into France (where, given France’s colonial history, they feel more at home). France, naturally, is crying foul, has said such refugees should be dealt with by the first EU country they enter and has again begun checking the documents of those arriving at its borders.
The rise of nationalist parties hostile to the EU has also carried on, with the electoral success of the True Finns in Finland. (I must be honest and admit I had never heard of the ‘True Finns’ until about three days ago, and perhaps you hadn’t either, but they are real and now have a sufficiently large number of MPs to be a force to be reckoned with in Finland.)
Here in Britain there have been quiet a few eurosceptics prophesying the imminent demise of the EU — it would be truer to say they have been praying for it — but until now they have largely belonged to the lunatic fringe of EU opponents and are rarely taken seriously by anyone but themselves. What was interesting about the Radio 4 piece and how it dealt with the possible slow disintegration of the EU was that it is anything but in the lunatic fringe of any movement, and given Auntie BBC’s usual chaste insistence on ‘balance’, I should imagine there was a small degree of soul-searching and ‘referring up’ before it was agreed the piece could be broadcast.
. . .
One other aspect of a possible slow disintegration of the EU alluded to by the piece was a growing North/South divide in Europe. The whole point about the EU, or one of them, was that ‘we are all in this together, the smallest member state is as important as the largest’ blah-blah, which was always a piece of idealistic fiction. The eternal dynamics of the group again came into play, as, of course, they had to, and the richer, stronger nations began to call the shots. Now we have a situation in which several of the Med EU states are in financial shit and the North EU states are being expected to bail them out, which is not going down at all well with the taxpayers of those North EU states. Now there’s a surprise.
What would happen if the EU were to ‘shrink’ again, to reconstitute itself into a smaller group of more responsible members? The first thing to say is that it simply wouldn’t happen like that, although there has been talk of a caucus being formed of all the stable eurozone economies within the eurozone. But I doubt whether the current crop of EU bigwigs would ever contemplate a situation where they would be left with a great deal of egg on their faces. It is more likely that they would carry on admiring the emperor’s new clothes until the time came for them to retire with their reputations and dignity intact on a fabulous pension, leaving a new crop off apparatchiks to clear up the mess.
And what of Greece, Portugal and Spain? It might be tactless to say so, but in historical terms they have all comparatively recently been dictatorships, and their reaction to economic adversity might not be the same as that of those EU states of a more calvinistic bent. Spain, the largest of the three, has a huge problem with youth unemployment, and the young tend to get restless rather faster than we old farts. I heard the BBC’s economics correspondent admit that other night that the question now being asked is not whether Greece will go bust, but when. Will Germans be happy to carry on shelling out more of their taxes to sustain Greece? All together now: No, of course they bloody won’t! But that is not what the EU idealists want to hear. They want to cling to the dream that ‘we’re all in this together, come hell or high water’.
A future problem for the EU is growing corruption in those member states which were once part of the Soviet bloc. Old habits die hard and the survival strategies employed when the communists were still in charge are proving to be just as lucrative these days under the evil EU empire (or something. That was a joke: I like to think I am NOT part of the anti-EU lunatic fringe). It seems this corruption is not, as one might think, restricted to former Soviet bloc states in the southern part of Europe, such as Romania and Bulgaria. The three Baltic members have also found that their politicians are finding it hard keeping their sticky fingers out of the till.
. . .
Then there’s the small matter of the EU’s request for an increase in its budget, and increase which is higher than eurozone inflation, so it’s not just a question of sitting tight until times is better, guv. So you really do have to ask whether the European Commission is firing on all cylinders or is, perhaps, not the teeniest bit out of touch. Well, it’s the latter, of course.
Whether of not an increase over an above inflation is warranted, you have to conclude that the EC is ineffably politically naive to make its demand at a time when the rest of Europe is being urged to tighten its belt, and the people of Greece, Ireland and Portugal have absolutely no choice in the matter. And do we really want such dumbos making decisions for us? That, by the way, is a rhetorical question.
Monday 18 April 2011
Strange but true - I have accidentally jumped on the iPad bandwagon: I got one I didn't even want. And is Turkey getting even more authoritarian?
Through what can only be called stupidity and misfortune, I am now the owner of an iPad. But before I am charged with jumping on an ibandwagon, trying to appear cool or any of the other nasty things which are said about iPad owners, I must point out that – this is where my stupidity comes in – I bought it by mistake. Well, not quite by mistake, but accidentally. It happened like this: I often visit eBay and keep an eye on various kinds of items, even items I know I shan’t want to buy. Why I do this, I don’t know, but I do it. One day, I spotted a ‘new, factory-sealed iPad 1, 16gb with both wi-fi and 3g’ so the more expensive sort. Ten minutes before the end of the auction the price was £380. At the point the excessively childish part of my nature kicked in and I decided to bid merely to bump up the price. You might claim this was unfair on the eventual buyer who would thus be paying more than he or she need to, to which I would respond that I am doing the seller a favour, ensuring that he or she gets a better price. So it’s a stalemate and lets drop the matter. The point is that I did bid, to £390, and someone else responded, raising the price to £400. So I went to £410 – and there were no further bids. Poetic justice you might say, serves you right. OK, point taken. But I now owned an iPad I didn’t want and never planned on buying. Furthermore, reselling, the obvious solution, was by now less attractive as the week I bought the iPad, Apple launched its successor, the iPad 2, which was not only faster but now had a camera. So who was going to want that first iPad. I left it in is sealed box for three weeks, while I debated what to do with it. I had previously seen one and had admired its design. But there was no way I could convince myself that the iPad could do anything my iPod Touch (fourth generation with camera) and one of my many, many laptops couldn’t do. Curiosity finally got the better of me. And, anyway, as I had by then bought a silicone screen protector and a case to keep it pristine, it was obvious that subconsciously I know I was going to keep it. Well, so now I’ve got one. Now here’s an odd thing: after a few hours, using it seems ‘more normal’ than using the iPod Touch. That now seems to have ‘rather a small screen’, whereas the iPad screen seems to be the ‘normal size’. I have also been reading newspapers and magazines on it, and – although I hate to say this – it does feel perfectly normal doing so, so normal, in fact, that I am persuaded that increasingly in the future the number of people who will read their daily paper and magazine using a tablet will increase substantially. The Daily Telegraph app is well thought out and when it introduces an ad – a full-screen ad at that – it doesn’t feel half as irritating as one might imagine. The ad can be ‘swiped’ away in a moment, but the point is that given such full-page ads are possible and, because of the size of the screen, don’t look rather silly, advertisers might feel more inclined to spend money on such advertising, making the web more of a market. So even though I loathe the ‘Mac community’ for its smug self-regard and the way bloody Steve Jobs has been canonised, I can’t deny that launching the iPad was rather more visionary than I first thought. Naturally, many companies – Dell, Samsung, Sony and HP to name just a few – are have now developed or are now developing their own tablet – and, bad news for Microsoft – many are also developing their own operating systems or using Google’s Android – so it would seem the idea will take off. It will be interesting to see what has evolved along those lines in ten years.
. . .
My sister contacted me from Istanbul last week to tell me she can no longer log onto Google blogs to read what I write. That kind of net blocking can only be done at an official level, and not even I am conceited enough to believe I have pissed off the Turkish authorities. A few days later, she was in touch again with the explanation: it seems so blogger somewhere had written something nasty which the Turkish football authorities objected to. Result: Google blogs are banned from Turkey. Well, that’s the official explanation at least. Unofficially I should think it is just another example of the Turkish government’s growing authoritarianism, which my sister has plenty of stories about. We in the West have been getting into bed with all sorts of people for ‘strategic reasons’ – why, until recently even Gaddafi was regarded as a man who was now again wearing clean underpants – but we really should be very careful indeed. There are still voices which demand that Turkey be admitted to the EU – quite what they would do if that happened and for one reason or another Turkey again invaded Cyprus can only be guessed – but then the supporters of ‘the project’ aren’t universally known for their wisdom. Oh, and by the way: the honest money these days isn’t on whether Greece will go bankrupt despite the EU bailout but when. And Irish government bonds have now been rated at junk status. Thought you like to know. Do have a happy Easter break.
. . .
A week or two ago, the Press here in Britain astounded us with the house in Swansea which bears an uncanny resemblance to Adolf Hitler, and today I can proudly present you with an image which is quite possible even more astounding: the jelly bean which looks like Kate Middleton. Enjoy (as they sometimes say in trendy bars in London, and elsewhere I should imagine.
. . .
My sister contacted me from Istanbul last week to tell me she can no longer log onto Google blogs to read what I write. That kind of net blocking can only be done at an official level, and not even I am conceited enough to believe I have pissed off the Turkish authorities. A few days later, she was in touch again with the explanation: it seems so blogger somewhere had written something nasty which the Turkish football authorities objected to. Result: Google blogs are banned from Turkey. Well, that’s the official explanation at least. Unofficially I should think it is just another example of the Turkish government’s growing authoritarianism, which my sister has plenty of stories about. We in the West have been getting into bed with all sorts of people for ‘strategic reasons’ – why, until recently even Gaddafi was regarded as a man who was now again wearing clean underpants – but we really should be very careful indeed. There are still voices which demand that Turkey be admitted to the EU – quite what they would do if that happened and for one reason or another Turkey again invaded Cyprus can only be guessed – but then the supporters of ‘the project’ aren’t universally known for their wisdom. Oh, and by the way: the honest money these days isn’t on whether Greece will go bankrupt despite the EU bailout but when. And Irish government bonds have now been rated at junk status. Thought you like to know. Do have a happy Easter break.
. . .
A week or two ago, the Press here in Britain astounded us with the house in Swansea which bears an uncanny resemblance to Adolf Hitler, and today I can proudly present you with an image which is quite possible even more astounding: the jelly bean which looks like Kate Middleton. Enjoy (as they sometimes say in trendy bars in London, and elsewhere I should imagine.
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