Bill Carmichael

Why the bishops are wrong over the benefits cap

2012-01-26T12:33:00.000Z

In the House of Lords this week the Bishop of Ripon andLeeds, John Packer, led a revolt by senior clergy against the government’swelfare reforms, arguing that an annual cap on benefits of £26,000 is unfairand un-Christian.

Fine, but if we take Mr Packer and his fellow bishops attheir word over what constitutes a fair income, there are going to have to besome enormous pay rises in the Church of England.

It would be fascinating for example to listen to the bishopsexplain to their curates – paid about £16,000 a year regardless of the numberof dependent children – why they have a duty to support through their taxes abenefit claimant pulling in the pre-tax equivalent of £35,000.

The vast majority of employees of the C of E –administrators, charity workers, cleaners as well as clergy – are not paidanything near £35,000 a year. A vicar for example will earn about £22,000before tax. Will the bishops’ compassion extend to them too?

Bishop John went even further, saying that paying someonewith dependent children the same as a childless person was unfair. So no doubthis diocese will be introducing a substantial pay differential for people withchildren and giving them a big pay increase every time a new child is born. Nolimits of course – the more children you have, the richer you get!

Of course none of this will happen. If Bishop John were asgenerous with church funds as he is with taxpayers’ money, the C of E would gobust in days.

And that is the point – we as a country are broke, partlythanks to the ever-increasing welfare bill. If the bishops are seeking anexcuse for moral outrage they should look no further than the £1 trillion indebt that we have accumulated.

As the former Archbishop of Canterbury, George Carey, pointedout this week, this means we are mortgaging the future of our children andgrandchildren – in other words stealing from them - because of our stubbornrefusal to live within our means.

Now that’s truly wicked and un-Christian.

It is not just C of E employees who are on low pay. The vastmajority of working people in this country could never dream of earning £35,000a year, still less the £50,000 equivalent paid out to some benefit claimants.That’s why 76% of people are in favour of the benefits cap, including 69% ofLabour voters.

The work ethic used to be a fundamental part of churchteaching and the Bible is replete with references to the virtue of work.

Work lifts people out of poverty, promotes self-respect and self-relianceand avoids the desperate downward spiral of dependency, fecklessness and povertyof aspiration.

Bishop John is apparently fond of quoting the Bible, soperhaps he won’t object if I remind him of St Paul’s words in his letter to theThessalonians: “For even when we were with you, this we commanded you,that if any would not work, neither should he eat.”

Is the Today programme sexist?

2012-01-26T12:27:00.000Z

Apparently84 per cent of reporters and guests on the Today programme on BBC Radio 4 aremen, according to Sound Women, a new pressure group set up to represent women workingin radio.

I’ll haveto take their word for it because I no longer tune in. The days when Today setthe day’s agenda and was essential listening are long gone.

It isnot the first time Today has been accused of sexism. Editor Ceri Thomas landedin huge trouble a while ago when he suggested women journalists were not toughenough to hack it in the Today newsroom.

Thesolution is simple - Harriet Harman and the rest of the sisterhood shouldrefuse to appear on the BBC until the imbalance is redressed.

Anythingthat keeps Harman off the airwaves has got my enthusiastic backing.

Can the government make you happy?

2012-01-20T13:08:00.001Z

How are you feeling today? A bit fed up? Down in the dumps?

Don’t worry. Ourpolitical class has the perfect solution to cheer you up – a visit from a manfrom Whitehall armed with a clipboard to inquire how happy you are.

Don’t scoff, becausepoliticians of all stripes have suddenly decided it is the government’s job toensure our happiness.

Let’s put aside for amoment how difficult it is to measure accurately something as subjective ashappiness, and ask if the state is the best institution to promote personal wellbeing?

Prime Minister DavidCameron certainly thinks so, and he is spending £2 million of our money toprove it. Last year he announced that the Office of National Statistics would beasking people to rate their wellbeing for an official “happiness index”.

Cameron and the restof the liberal elite have clearly been influenced by a number of recent bestsellingbooks, such as The Spirit Level by Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett, andAffluenza by Oliver James, which criticise consumerism and the hedonistictreadmill of modern life.

These argue thatbeyond a certain level, becoming richer does not make us any happier and mayindeed make us unhappy and discontent. What matters, argue the authors, isfighting inequality because, as The Spirit Level puts it, “more equal societiesalmost always do better”.

This politicallycharged hypothesis has been gobbled up uncritically by the likes of Cameron whohas concluded it is the government’s job to make us happier by making us moreequal.

But this week some newresearch emerged that seems to hole these theories below the waterline. Therespected think tank, the Institute of Economic Affairs, looked at data from126 countries and concluded that there’s a strong correlation between lifesatisfaction and income – in other words being richer does indeed make ushappier.

It also found noevidence that equality promoted happiness. Instead the clearest determinants ofwellbeing are employment, marriage, religious belief and the avoidance ofpoverty – none of which correlated with income inequality.

The IEA research alsofound a clear relationship with a smaller state and happiness – wheregovernments spend a lot of our money, people’s levels of happiness decrease.

Ruth Porter of the IEAconcluded: “If the government wants to help us behappy the best thing they can do is to reduce their interference in our lives,allow us to keep more of our income, while spending less of our moneythemselves and concern themselves more with the economy and less with asking usquestions about how we are feeling.”

In other words, get the hell out ofthe way Mr Cameron, and let us get on with our lives.

Italy's hero of the week

2012-01-20T13:06:00.000Z

Hero of the week is Italiancoastguard captain Gregario de Falco who ordered the skipper of the strickencruise liner, the Costa Concordia, back on board to coordinate the rescue ofpassengers.

Francesco Schettino has been dubbed“Captain Coward” after it emerged he abandoned his charges to save his own skinafter driving the liner onto rocks on the Tuscan coast.

Schettino was sitting in a lifeboatas a desperate rescue operation was taking place on the upturned hull.

In a transcript of the conversationbetween the two men, a clearly furious and exasperated de Falco tells thecaptain to return to his ship to help stranded women and children.

“Vado a bordo”, he yells (go onboard) followed by an expletive.

The coastguard commander comes acrossvery much as a man of courage who knows exactly where his duty lies.

Currently Italy has abandoneddemocracy in favour of a “technocratic” dictatorship imposed by the EU.

But if the Italians ever freethemselves from under the yoke of the imperial Brussels regime, they could dofar worse than to invite Captain de Falco to take up the job as prime minister.

The ugly truth about politics

2012-01-17T15:03:00.001Z

Labour leader Ed Miliband had to defend himself recently from a suggestion – from the BBC’s John Humphrys no less – that he was too ugly to become prime minister.

I’m all for robust questioning, but was I alone in thinking the intimation more than a little impertinent?

Ed’s certainly not my type, but I would describe him as a bit weird in a geeky sort of way, rather than downright ugly.

It’s true I can’t imagine him in Number Ten in a month of Sundays, but that’s because of his blinkered deficit denial, rather than his looks.

And since when did politics become a beauty contest anyway?

The answer is that judging our leaders on their physical attractiveness is very much a modern phenomenon.

For example in recent years we have rejected Neil Kinnock (too Welsh and too ginger), William Hague (too bald and too Northern), Michael Howard (too saturnine) and Gordon Brown (too grumpy and too Scottish) in favour of smoothy-chops matinee idols such as Tony Blair and David Cameron.

But look back only a few years ago and a pretty face was not an essential prerequisite for high political office.

Margaret Thatcher was said to set some pulses racing among her cabinet colleagues, but I doubt if her steely glamour won her many votes in the country.

Neither James Callaghan nor Edward Heath could be described as oil paintings, and to modern eyes the chinless Alec Douglas-Home looks decidedly odd.

Winston Churchill had the demeanour of a bulldog chewing a wasp, Clem Attlee appeared as though he’d come to read the gas meter and no one mentioned Harold Macmillan’s looks one way or another, probably because in those more enlightened days it wasn’t considered the slightest bit relevant.

In fact out of all our post-war prime ministers perhaps only Anthony Eden, who looked like he could play the romantic lead in a classic British film – Brief Encounter perhaps – would pass muster in the beauty stakes, and he was very much the exception rather than the rule.

Why such a remarkable and rapid change? I suspect the increasing importance of television in political campaigning is at least partly to blame. We now expect our leaders to look good on the small screen. We’ve even invented a word for it - “telegenic”.

It may also be that in the age of the X Factor and Big Brother we have simply become far more shallow and vote for the prettiest contestant on offer.

We should beware and resist this impulse – history demonstrates time and again that a cute smile is no guarantee of political competence or strength of character.

If we are to reject Miliband, then we should do so because of his policies, not because he isn’t easy on the eye.

Of course, the Americans reached this point many years before we did. They opted for the dazzling Hollywood allure of John Kennedy, while we Brits were content with the rotund, pipe-smoking Yorkshire homeliness of Harold Wilson.

But the American experience also illustrates the dangers of judging a book by its cover. If you opt for the best looking guy in the race you may just end up with a vacuous, value-free, empty suit – just like Barack Obama.

A winter's tale

2012-01-17T14:59:00.002Z

I took one of my favourite walks in the Dales last weekend and found daffodils in profusion everywhere.

I can’t remember the blooms coming out so early in January and it has certainly been unseasonably mild for the time of year.

This has led our climate alarmist friends to begin bleating that the end is nigh and we are all going to die as a result of global warming.

The mistake they make is to confuse climate with weather. They are very different. A brief temperature spike in midwinter really has little impact on long-term climate trends, nor does a chilly day in August.

And I suspect winter may yet have a few nasty surprises in store before spring.

Ne’er cast a clout till May be out, as my nan used to day.

The Stephen Lawrence case and the British press

2012-01-09T17:34:00.000Z

The Stephen Lawrence case illustrates some of the best and worst things about Britain.

The worst is that isolated pockets of virulent racism still exist; the best is that the vast majority of people of all races were appalled and disgusted that a teenager could be murdered simply because of the colour of his skin.

The worst was that the police hopelessly bungled the initial investigation into the stabbing; the best is that since those early blunders detectives patiently built a compelling case to put before a jury and secure the convictions of two of the attackers.

Also among the best is the role played by the popular press – newspapers helped keep the case in the public eye and the Daily Mail in particular was courageous when it named those it claimed were responsible for the murder and dared them to sue for libel.

It is worth emphasising the public good newspapers can achieve because British journalism is under more pressure and scrutiny than at any time for many years.

Various politicians and celebrities have trotted along to the Leveson inquiry into press ethics to denounce tabloid excesses.

And there is a serious danger that as a result of the illegal activity of a tiny minority of reporters, swingeing new restrictions of freedom of expression will be imposed.

This would be a serious mistake. I don’t defend phone hacking, but it is a criminal offence that should be investigated by the police and dealt with by the courts. It has little to do with press regulation.

Thanks to judge-made privacy laws and our oppressive libel laws, British journalism already operates under one of the most hostile environments for free speech in the Western world.

Yet despite these constraints British journalists frequently make the world a better place.

For an example look no further than the newspaper where this column appears – the Yorkshire Post, which is renowned across the country for its campaigns and investigations. Local government today is undoubtedly a cleaner and more decent place partly because of this publication’s brave exposure of corruption amongst councillors.

Or the much maligned and now closed News of the World which broke some huge stories, not least the tales of corruption amongst some members of the Pakistani cricket team that resulted in three international players being jailed last year.

There’s some irony in the fact that the NOTW was closed down at least partly because of a story that proved entirely false – that the newspaper was responsible for deleting messages on Milly Dowler’s phone thereby giving the murdered schoolgirl’s parents false hope that she was alive. I for one will mourn its passing.

What these instances and the Stephen Lawrence coverage demonstrate is that journalism can be a tremendous force of good in public life, and anything that obstructs this vital role should be rejected.

Smokie signal

2012-01-09T17:26:00.000Z

Most unexpected story of the week was the news that Russia’s president Dmitry Medvedev is apparently a fan of the veteran Bradford rock band Smokie.

The Yorkshire outfit, whose hits include Living Next Door to Alice, was invited to play at an exclusive dinner at the Kremlin last month in front of hundreds of politicians, military figures and the prime minister, Vladimir Putin.

I must admit I’ve not heard much of Smokie since about 1979 and didn’t even realise they were still touring.

But apparently the band has a huge following in eastern Europe and had just finished a Russian tour when they received the invitation to play from Medvedev’s officials.

Good for them. The band members must all be in their sixties now, and they are still earning a living by banging out the hits, even if they had to go all the way to Moscow to do so.

It is a pity we don’t support home grown talent more here in the UK. Any chance of an invitation for Smokie from Downing Street?

Battery egg scandal that threatens UK producers

2011-12-28T17:38:00.000Z

If you want to know how the European Union works you needlook no further than the food on your plate – particularly if you enjoy acouple of fried eggs on toast.

This weekend the European egg industry undergoes a momentouschange in the methods of production, but as is common with the EU, it is thegood guys who have played by the rules who are punished, while the subsidyjunkies and regulation dodgers are given huge, unfair advantages.

It all began back in 1999 when, under pressure from animalrights activists, the EU enacted something called the Welfare of Laying HensDirective, which effectively banned battery cages.

Egg producers were given 12 years – to this Sunday, January1, 2012 - to tear down their battery cages. From this date all caged hens usedin egg production within the EU must be housed in “enriched” cages with morespace (at least 750 cm2 compared with 550 cm2 in the old battery system), moreheight, a nest, perching space and litter to allow pecking and scratching.

Nothing wrong with that of course, although it is worthpointing out that British farmers have always been in the forefront of advancesin animal welfare without the need for meddlesome directives from Brussels.

But as is invariably the case, the British officials didn’tjust adopt the new regulations – they dipped them in gold and encrusted themwith diamonds and then applied them with all the ruthlessness of thebureaucratic zealot with no experience of the real world.

The assembled clipboard men of the Department ofEnvironment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) descended on Britain’s hapless eggproducers demanding every jot and tittle of the myriad regulations be obeyed tothe letter.

Egg farmers were bullied and harried and warned in no uncertainterms that the sale of battery eggs would be totally illegal throughout the EUfrom next January. If they didn’t adopt the changes, they were told, they wouldbe forced out of business.

As a result British egg producers have invested anastonishing £400 million on phasing out the old battery cages and adopting thenew standards. Amazingly, 100% of British producers will be fully compliantwith the new regulations as from this Sunday, according to the British EggIndustry Council (BEIC).

And in Europe? Well, what do you think! As is always thecase our European “partners” simply ignored any regulations that didn’t suitthem.

Thirteen EU countries, including Spain, Italy and Poland,ignored the ban. It is estimated that more than a third of EU caged eggproduction breaks the new rules and that 84 million hens will be kept in“illegal” battery cages in 2012.

They will now be able to use their competitive advantage toflood the British market with illegally produced, but far cheaper eggs,threatening the future of British producers and thousands of jobs.

Attentive readers will recall we have been here before. In1999 British pig producers adopted new stringent welfare rules, only to seetheir businesses undermined by cheap pork produced to poor welfare standardsand imported from across the EU.

And what will the EU or the British government do about thisscandal? Not a fat lot is the answer.

In its entire history Defra has never been known to haveonce stood up for British consumers and producers, and this is just the latestexample.

Earlier this month agriculture minister Jim Paice rejectedcalls for an import ban on illegally produced eggs, saying that instead hehoped the UK food industry would reach a “voluntary consensus” not to usebattery eggs.

Mr Paice and his officials clearly haven’t the faintest ideaof how industry works. Manufacturers are simply not going to “voluntarily” optfor a more expensive product.

There are a few things you can do. Only buy British eggs andinsist that any cakes, mayonnaise, quiches etc that you buy only contain homeproduced eggs too.

Britain’s egg farmers deserve your support.

The Eurozone money-go-round

2011-12-28T17:32:00.000Z

He was one of those“characters” who always seem to hang about the bar in street corner pubs, and everytime I popped in for a pint he would always greet me with the words:

“If you loan me atenner, I’ll be able to pay you back that fiver I owe you.”

I didn’t take him upon the offer – and come to think of it I never got my original fiver back.

He was what might becalled an eccentric spendthrift, and you quickly learned to loan money to him onlythe once, because you would never see it again.

But if I’d known that hisway with money would soon form the basis of the economic system for an entirecontinent, I would have pushed him in the direction of Brussels where he mayhave found gainful employment.

Because strange as itmay seem, my ex-drinking companion’s approach to debt is much the same as theEuropean Union’s. The main difference is the Eurozone deals in many billions ofpounds rather than the odd fiver.

The similarities arestark. As with the guy in the bar, lenders are reluctant to offer any more moneyto several European countries, because they doubt if they will get it back. Forexample, talks are still continuing to decide how much of Greece’s huge debtswill be written off, never to be seen again.

Another uncannyparallel is the notion that you have to loan more money to debtors so they canpay back a small proportion on what they already owe you.

Take Italy forexample. This week the new unelected, ‘technocratic’ government imposed on theItalian people by their European masters, decided it would donate 23.5 billioneuro to shore up the finances of the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

All well and good, butthe problem is that Italy is effectively bust. It doesn’t have two euros to rubtogether. It can’t in fact donate money it doesn’t have.

No matter, Italy isapparently planning to borrow the cash from the Eurozone’s existing bailoutfund, the European Financial Stability Fund (EFSF), which was set up withdonations from Eurozone countries, including Italy.

Once the IMF has beentopped up with 150 billion euros from Europe – although according to GeorgeOsborne, not including the UK – it will be a position to bail out failingEuropean countries by way of the EFSF.

So lets see if we canunpick this money-go-round; the EFSF is lending 23.5 billion euros to Italy, soItaly can donate that money to the IMF, so the IMF can give that money to theEFSF, which in turn will give it to Italy.

Got that? I mean whatcould possibly go wrong?

Deaf to reason

2011-12-28T17:25:00.003Z

Toddlers in York havebeen banned from making a star sign when they sing along to the nursery rhymeTwinkle, Twinkle Little Star’ in case it offends deaf people.

Apparently the‘diamond in the sky’ symbol formed by thumbs and forefingers that children haveused for generations, is similar to the sign language gesture used for femalegenitalia.

Jill Hodges, assistantdirector of education, children and young people’s services at City of York Councilresponsible for the Sure Start mother and toddler group in Acomb, denied it wasa case of political correctness, insisting it was more “a sensible decision toprevent deaf children and deaf parents being offended by the use of the gesture”.

And how many deafchildren and deaf parents attend the Sure Start group? The answer is none.

Honestly, where dothey find these people?

The blame for thisstupid decision lies, as is so often the case, with the diversity Gestapo.Staff at the nursery had recently returned from ‘sensitivity’ training on signlanguage. It is a pity they didn’t teach them a bit of common sense while theywere about it.

If you are offended bythe innocent gestures of children singing a nursery rhyme, then it is time togrow up a bit, because the blame lies with you, and not with the youngsters.

Day of reckoning for the Euro is at hand

2011-12-15T17:12:00.002Z

Well, that didn’t take long did it?

A week ago we were told that yet another “final” deal had been struck to save the Euro – this time 26 EU members had united against British intransigence to forge a new alliance that would tackle the debt crisis once and for all.

By this week the optimism had largely disappeared. The Euro continued its death spiral, French and German banks wobbled and there’s a strong chance of a wholesale downgrading of credit ratings across the doomed Eurozone.

Meanwhile the Irish, Dutch, Finns, Swedes, Danes and Czechs began to have second thoughts about the blank cheque they had signed to hand over their sovereignty to the Germans, without asking their people or parliaments first.

Perhaps if they had a couple of years the EU could cobble together some kind of unrepresentative, undemocratic stitch-up, as it has many times in the past.

The problem is the Euro doesn’t have a couple of years – it probably doesn’t even have a couple of months.

By my reckoning this is about the 16th “final” deal to solve the crisis – and each one has unravelled before the ink was dry on the agreement.

This is because EU is trying to use a short-term political sticking plaster to cover a gaping economic wound.

The eruption of anti-British bile from our European “partners” since David Cameron wielded his veto last week has been unpleasant to behold.

But in reality it is completely irrelevant, as is the squabbling among the European leaders.

What we saw in Brussels was Cameron, Sarkozy and Merkel arguing furiously over the precise positioning of the deckchairs, as the ship steamed at full speed towards an iceberg.

The difficulties in Europe have little to do with “ever closer union” or the Euro – although these foolish pipedreams have made matters much worse.

No, as in America, our problem can be summed up in one word – debt.

Over recent decades we’ve indulged ourselves in an unprecedented spending spree. We’ve paid out lavish unemployment and sickness benefits, retired early, worked fewer hours, taken longer holidays, and spent billions on education and health.

All very well if you are able to pay for such things – but we can’t.

We’ve been spending more than we’ve earned and we’ve plugged the gap with vast and unsustainable levels of borrowing.

Debt on this scale is not just bad economics and politics – it is morally wicked too. We have effectively stolen from our children and grandchildren to subsidise a standard of living we couldn’t otherwise afford.

The EU’s answer to this is to borrow more. Yes, unbelievably, Europe thinks it can solve the debt crisis by further increasing the level of debt.

And so for the past two years it has staggered along from bailout to bailout, borrowing more and more and hoping the crisis will somehow solve itself.

The trouble now is that Europe has run out of money and, as Nicolas Sarkozy commented in a rare moment of insight “those that lend to us no longer want to lend to us” – certainly not the Chinese.

We are close to the end of the road. Probably the best we can hope for is an orderly break-up of the Eurozone to allow indebted countries to default and devalue and then export their way back into prosperity.

The worst is that the Eurozone collapses into chaos. Either way it heralds the start of some serious spending cuts – not the puny ones we’ve seen so far.

It means the end of living beyond our means, the end of the European “social model” and possibly the end of the welfare state as we now know it in the UK.

Economists tell us that each credit bubble invariably ends with a painful correction – and the longer you put off the inevitable, the worse the suffering will be.

I fear the day of reckoning is close at hand – and it isn’t going to be pretty.

A world full of danger

2011-12-13T15:01:00.001Z

Events in Russia demonstrate that the world is an unstable place – and it is getting nastier and uglier by the day.

Vladimir Putin’s party won a disputed and, many allege, rigged election at the weekend, although with a much reduced majority.

When pro-democracy campaigners called foul, the authorities arrested hundreds of demonstrators and set militia and pro-government thugs to beat them up.

Things became so bad this week that former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev demanded the fraudulent elections be rerun, but it seems Putin is unlikely to yield.

It is all one in the eye for the optimists among us who hoped the collapse of Soviet communism 20 years ago would herald in a new era of liberty and prosperity for the long suffering Russian people.

Instead, much the same gangsters remain in charge and Russia seems as far away from the ideal of a Western style democracy as ever it was.

These are painful lessons to be learned. For those of us lucky enough to be born during the last 60 years it has been tempting to think that the relative peace and prosperity we’ve enjoyed is the norm.

It is not. Our parents and grandparents expended much blood and treasure to secure our freedoms.

In fact both historically and geographically the benign environment of modern Britain is the exception, rather than the rule.

For much of the world - not just Russia but China, much of Africa and the entire Middle East (excepting, of course, tiny democratic Israel) - widespread corruption and brutal repression is commonplace.

Even in much of “civilised” Western Europe the roots of democracy don’t run very deep. Until the mid 1970s, for example, Spain, Portugal and Greece were run by military dictatorships.

On the Continent, as recent history bears witness, extremism of both the Right and Left always lurks not very deep below the surface.

As the dominoes topple and country after country collapses into economic chaos, we can expect those extremists to grow in power and influence. I’m reluctant to be so pessimistic to draw the obvious parallels with the 1930s, but needless to say it isn’t going to be pretty.

And of course there is always the baleful influence of Russia, which can bully its neighbours through its military strength and control of vital energy supplies.

Add that to the threat of militant Islam and a nuclear armed Iran, as well as the growing confidence of a rapidly expanding China, and you have a combustible and potentially explosive mixture.

And for the first time in a generation there are no reliable and friendly allies to whom we can turn.

The United States has been left paralysed and impotent by catastrophically weak leadership under President Barack Obama, coupled with an unsustainable level of debt that is even worse than Europe’s.

Europe meanwhile is going through a slow-motion car crash from which there are unlikely to emerge many able bodied survivors.

Incidentally, at a time when the UK will need to be nimble and adaptable to compete economically, we would do well not to handcuff ourselves to the rotting corpse that is the European Union.

So, just as we become aware of a much harsher, more dangerous world, it looks like we are pretty much on our own.

Perhaps, for the first time, the current generation will be required to defend our hard-won freedoms – alone if necessary.

It may be a comfort to recall that it wouldn’t be for the first time.

But is the current crop of Britons up to it?

Labour's Santa has spent all the money

2011-12-13T14:59:00.001Z

Much hilarity at Westminster where shadow chancellor and Morley and Outwood MP Ed Balls dressed up as Santa Claus for the Christmas party for MPs’ children at the House of Commons.

But given Labour’s past form, I suspect Santa’s sack may have been empty on this occasion except for a scribbled note that said: “Sorry children – no presents this year because we’ve spent all the money!”

Sorry Billy Bragg - your hypocrisy stinks and it isn't 'cynical' to say so

2011-12-06T13:04:00.001Z

The people at the Occupy camps like to boast about the ‘diversity’ of their movement, which is a bit odd given that the protesters are overwhelmingly middle class and pretty much 100% white.

Perhaps what they mean is that if you speak to individual protesters, as I have done, you will experience a breadth of views on a diverse range of topics – so much so that it is often hard to pin down exactly what the Occupiers stand for.

It is a bit like trying to nail a jelly to the ceiling.

That’s how I felt reading Billy Bragg’s article for the Yorkshire Post, which was his right of reply to my earlier column about the Occupy camps.

In his article Billy argues that I’ve got it entirely wrong when I characterised the protest as anti-capitalist.

Erm OK - I suppose all those “Capitalism is Crisis” and “Marx was right!” banners must have been left by someone else entirely then.

Billy insists the protest isn’t about revolution, or Marxism, or socialism – or any other “ism” that might alarm the well-heeled activists from the leafy suburbs.

It is, says Billy, about something more practical and sensible – a curb on corporate lobbying.

Really? If so, just hold on a moment and I’ll go and fetch my tent, because I’ve been campaigning about corporate lobbying since before the last time Billy had a hit record – and that was a hell of a long time ago.

Corporate lobbying does indeed undermine our democracy – but it isn’t solely practised by big business.

Pressure groups such as Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth spend millions buying influence at Westminster too.

That’s why we now have such swingeing green taxes on our gas and electricity bills that fully a quarter of families have been driven into fuel poverty.

But the biggest corporate lobbyists of all are Billy’s comrades in the public sector unions. Not content with buying a minister or two, the unions have bought an entire political party.

That’s why the last Labour government chickened out of addressing the public sector pension crisis, and why Ed Miliband was so terrified of his union paymasters that he didn’t dare whisper any criticism of last week’s damaging strikes.

Billy seems more in thrall to the unions than even the Labour party, but if he is serious about such abuses, then we have much common ground.

Billy charges me with cynicism and says I’m “no longer willing to join the struggle for a better world”.
.
I’ve never met the man, so how he can presume to know so much about me is a bit of a mystery.

But this kind of argument is common, perhaps even universal, with people on the Left. They think that if you disagree with them it is not just a difference of opinion but evidence of a moral failing on your part.

They think you are not just wrong, but you are nasty with it.

I wonder if it has ever occurred to Billy that perhaps we are both striving for a better world, but we have profound and honest differences of how to get there?

I disagree with Billy not because I am nasty or cynical, but because I have attempted to learn the lessons of history.

And history tells us that whenever the policies of the type Billy espouses have been tried it hasn’t resulted in increased equality at all, but invariably it has caused misery, starvation and brutal political repression.

From the Soviet Union to Eastern Europe to North Korea to Zimbabwe to Cambodia – every single time.

In contrast free market capitalism can unleash the creative urges of individuals to build businesses, create jobs and generate wealth.

The simple, inescapable fact is that capitalism, for all its undoubted faults, has raised more people out of poverty than any other political/economic system that has ever been tried.

Billy is at his most ridiculous when he tries to portray himself as a humble troubadour eking out a meagre crust travelling between chilly venues in a glorified Transit van.

Oh do come off it!

I mean have you seen his house?

For those who don’t want to click, it is about the size of your average district general hospital and probably has a carbon footprint to match.

He probably has to keep touring just to pay the gas bill.

As I said in my original piece I’ve no problem with this. He’s worked hard and reaped the rewards so good luck to him.

But Billy can’t surround himself with the accoutrements of a fabulously wealthy lifestyle and then try to play the part of a downtrodden worker, without being laughed off the stage.
.
Billy’s rejection of “Marxist rhetoric” also rings hollow given one of his favourite numbers at his Occupy gigs – and one that gets the Occupy crowd singing along - is that Soviet Communist anthem, The Internationale.

Let’s never forget that this was the background music to the extermination of millions of kulaks and the dispatch of anyone who dissented to gulag and firing squad.

It is a bit like having a jolly singalong to the Horst Wessel Song or Deutschland, Deutschland uber alles.

But Billy has changed the words. So here we have the absolutely delicious spectacle of a very wealthy man, who has carefully and shrewdly accumulated a substantial degree of material riches, lecturing people who are far poorer than him, with the words:

“Don’t cling so hard to your possessions.”

I’m sorry Billy, your hypocrisy stinks to high heaven and it isn’t in the least bit cynical of me to point it out.

Last chance to avoid Middle East war?

2011-12-06T12:49:00.001Z

Iran is a rogue state that threatens not just the stability of the Middle East, but of the entire world.

The mediaeval bigots who run Iran have never been exactly rational or stable, but this week’s carefully orchestrated mob attack on the British embassy in Tehran has ratcheted up the tension by several notches.

Don’t for a moment imagine that this was a “spontaneous” expression of anger by excitable students as the Iranian authorities have risibly maintained.

Spontaneous demonstrations just don’t happen in Iran – or if they do they are brutally suppressed by the regime, as happened in 2009 when young people protesting over fraudulent presidential elections were slaughtered in their hundreds.

No, the riots and fire bombings this week were in all likelihood carried out by paid government goons, many of them members of the feared Basiji militia – Iran’s equivalent of the Nazi Gestapo.

This militia has been a key weapon used by the Iranian despots to maintain their grip on power with a combination of brutal repression at home, allied to a belligerent foreign policy.

The mullahs who have seized control in Iran have never had much time for the civilised niceties of the Vienna Convention, and this week’s attack was eerily reminiscent of the 1979 siege of the US Embassy in Tehran when American diplomats were held hostage for 144 days.

The big difference this time around is that many experts believe that Iran is close to producing a viable nuclear weapon.

If that is allowed to happen, disaster will ensue. Iran’s unstable and fanatical President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has vowed several times to wipe Israel off the map. So clearly Israel would be forced to act to defend itself, as it is entitled to do.

But even if a pre-emptive strike against Iran’s nuclear facilities was successful, the resulting conflagration could engulf several of Iran’s neighbours and send oil prices rocketing to even higher levels with ruinous consequences for the world economy.

If this nightmare scenario is to be avoided it is important that the international community acts in concert to curb Iran’s aggression.

Luckily, after a failed and naïve policy of “engagement” with Iran under President Barack Obama, the US has finally come to its senses and is now ready for much tougher action.

Britain’s foreign secretary William Hague also seems ready to tighten the screw on Tehran.
Yesterday the focus turned on our so-called allies and partners in the European Union.

Mr Hague was in Brussels for a meeting of EU foreign ministers where he asked for an intensification of economic and diplomatic pressure against Iran.

France and Germany in particular have heavy investments in refining Iran’s oil to supply its domestic need for petrol and diesel.

If these and other EU countries join in tough sanctions it will seriously weaken the Iranian regime and curtail its capacity for making mischief.

Even with the Eurozone collapsing, this should still command Europe’s attention. It is probably our last chance to avoid a new Middle Eastern war.

And it is time for Germany and France to do the decent thing for once.

Rubbish left by public sector strikers

2011-12-01T10:47:00.001Z

The filth left behind in Sheffield by the public sector workers who were on strike yesterday has to be seen to be believed.

This morning the area around the war memorial in Barker’s Pool was strewn with litter – left-wing leaflets, coffee cups, fag ends, broken placards, sandwich wrappings – you name it.

Don’t these people know not to drop rubbish where they stand? Don’t they respect the environment or have any pride in their city at all? Clearly not.

The contrast with another large gathering at Barker’s Pool just a few weeks ago couldn’t be sharper.

Remembrance Sunday also attracted a large crowd who came to pay their respects to the war dead.

But they managed to use the litter bins or take their rubbish home with them.

And when they left Barker’s Pool it was spotless.

Who are the real Sheffielders I wonder?

Billy Bragg bites back!

2011-11-30T17:09:00.001Z

I'm told that millionaire pop singer Billy Bragg is exercising his right of reply in this Friday's Yorkshire Post to my piece last week pointing out his hypocrisy.

Fair play; he has a right to defend himself and I am fascinated to find out what he has to say.

But I'm a bit surprised to find Billy slumming it with the workers - or the 99% as they are now known.

I hope Billy realises something I've known from long experience - the YP doesn't pay the kind of freelance rates that would help a member of the 1% to maintain a £1.5m cliff top mansion in Dorset.

Bill Bragg, capitalism and me

2011-11-24T11:21:00.001Z

(Slight re-write for the YP)

Singer Billy Bragg turned up at the Occupy camps in both Leeds and Sheffield in recent days to show solidarity with the anti-capitalist protesters.

He sang a few out-of-tune songs to sparse audiences, including a slightly weird, politically correct version of the socialist anthem, The Internationale.

Certainly the words seemed to have changed a lot since my days on the barricades.

The third line, which I knew as “For reason in revolt now thunders”, has been changed to “Don’t cling so hard to your possessions” - and the millionaire pop star belted it out without even the merest hint of a blush.

Hypocrisy aside, Billy and I have some things in common. We are close in age, and we both come from solidly working class stock, but there the similarities end.

I’ve worked in journalism for more than 30 years. I’ve never been out of work for long, but neither have I enjoyed spectacular success or a big salary.

At times money has been tight and it has been a struggle to put a roof over our heads, food on the table and ensure the children are adequately clothed and shod.

In the Occupiers' parlance, I am very much one of the 99%.

Billy couldn’t be more different. He’s an international superstar, has made many hit records and can fill stadia with thousands of adoring fans.

He lives in some splendour in a £1.5 million mansion in the pretty county of Dorset, and he clings on hard to his possessions pretty effectively. His record loyalties alone are probably sufficient to maintain him in some style for the rest of his life.

He is definitely part of the 1%.

But despite these disparities in wealth, I would describe myself as reasonably content.

The Occupiers argue that I am wrong to feel this way. They say I should be seething with rage and resentment because Billy has a bigger slice of pie than I do.

They say I should demand that the state expropriates Billy’s wealth and redistributes it to the rest of us. And they argue I should be sulking in a tent in the centre of Leeds or Sheffield until I get my way.

My biggest problem with this is that I cannot in my heart bring myself to resent Billy one penny of his wealth or one iota of his success.

He’s worked hard and has reaped the rewards – so good luck to him.

Billy’s music is not to my taste, and frankly I find the proletarian posturing faintly ridiculous, but a lot of people like his stuff and are prepared to pay hard cash to listen to it.

In fact Billy is the sort of hugely successful capitalist that we should all admire. Britain could do with more people like Billy.

I hope this explains why I can’t stand in solidarity with the Occupiers – I just can’t summon up the necessary degree of envy, resentment, bitterness and rage.

And I do wonder if a movement entirely predicated on such negative emotions can ever achieve anything positive.

All occupiers are equal, but some are more equal than others

2011-11-24T11:18:00.001Z

(slight rewrite for the YP)

The Occupy movement provided the biggest laugh of the week.

In New York two of the leaders of the movement were found staying at a £450 a night hotel while their supporters shivered in tents on the street.

When confronted in the swanky hotel lobby one of them said: “Tents are not for me.”

The other is quoted as saying: “It is an expensive hotel. Whatever.”

The more this goes on, the more it resembles Animal Farm (well worth a re-read by the way).

Remember: “All animals are equal, but some are more equal than others.”

And the last words of the book: “The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which.”

Oink, oink!

Exposing the myths about the Tesco 'forced labour' story

2011-11-23T11:25:00.001Z

According to the Guardian, young people are being forced to work without pay for supermarkets and budget stores such as Tesco and Poundland.

What! Slave labour in modern Britain! What a disgrace!

But if you look at the story a little more closely you quickly realise two things; firstly young people are not being forced to do anything, and secondly neither are they required to work unpaid.

In other words the two central tenets of the story turn out to be wrong.

Other than that the story was entirely accurate!

In fact the scheme offers people claiming Jobseekers Allowance (JSA) work experience and training at reputable employers.

Considering one of the reasons people may find themselves unemployed in the first place is because of a lack of experience and training, you might think this is a good thing.

But claimants are not “forced” to do anything. The scheme is entirely voluntary. Neither is it unpaid.

Claimants will continue to receive the JSA throughout the programme. So they are still paid, but the funding comes from the taxpayer rather than the employer.

Claimants are no worse off and could gain valuable experience at no cost to themselves that could help them find a job.

Once claimants have volunteered for the scheme they then have a week “cooling off period” during which they can change their minds.

But after that point if they fail to turn up or pull out of the scheme, their benefits are docked.

This is what has caused apoplectic fury on the Left and accusations of “slave labour”.

But hold on a minute – if they don’t turn up, they don’t get paid. Is that so outrageous? Doesn’t this rule apply to every single person in a job in Britain, and probably the whole world?

Is there an employer on the entire planet who would be happy to keep paying the wages of a person who refused to turn up for work?

The fact this was deemed a story simply illustrates how degraded our something-for-nothing culture of entitlement and dependency has become.

My only gripe with this scheme is that it is voluntary, rather than compulsory. I’d go much further and make work an obligation, and not an option, for any able bodied person claiming JSA.

This could be state sponsored employment – clearing leaves, salting icy paths, double digging abandoned allotments, planting spring bulbs, shrubs and trees – it doesn’t really matter.

The key feature is that claimants are required to work 37.5 hours a week, and if they fail to turn up their money is docked accordingly.

If you want to know a little more about how this works I’d highly recommend this terrific piece by US academic Lawrence Meade for the BBC’s Newsnight programme.

When something similar was tried in Wisconsin in the US it was a spectacular success with the number of families reliant on welfare declining from 100,000 to little over 8,000 in a decade.

Poverty didn’t increase. In fact the average household incomes of the poorest people improved markedly – because people on benefits moved into paid employment.

What the Wisconsin reformers grasped – and what seems to escape our politicians on this side of the pond – is that far from alleviating poverty, the welfare system perpetuates it by encouraging an enervated culture of dependency whereby the “clients” are persuaded that they are unable to help themselves.

There’s only one sure fire way out of poverty and it can be summed up in one word – work!

Occupy Wall Street leaders living in luxury hotel

2011-11-22T11:11:00.001Z

This is utterly hilarious; two of the leaders on the OWS movement in the US have been found out staying at a $700 dollar a night (about £450) luxury hotel.

When confronted in the swanky hotel lobby one of them said: “Tents are not for me.”

The other is quoted as saying: “It is an expensive hotel. Whatever.”

You can read the full story here

The more this goes on, the more it resembles Animal Farm (well worth a re-read by the way).

Remember: “All animals are equal, but some are more equal than others.”

And the last words of the book: “The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which.”

Oink, oink!

Billy Bragg, capitalism and me

2011-11-20T13:30:00.001Z

I missed Billy Bragg’s performance at the Occupy Sheffield camp this week, although I’ve managed to catch up thanks to the wonders of YouTube.

It seems he sang a few songs, including a version of the Internationale (the words seemed to have changed a lot since my days on the barricades), to a crowd that looked a little sparse, and probably a lot smaller than he is used to.

And his appearance sparked few thoughts that I hope will explain why I think Billy and the Occupiers are entirely wrong.

Billy and I are very close in age, and we both come from solidly working class stock, but there the similarities end.

I’ve worked in journalism and similar areas for more than 30 years. I’ve never been out of work for long, but neither have I enjoyed spectacular success or a big salary.

At times money has been very tight and it has been a struggle to put a roof over our heads, food on the table and ensure the children are adequately clothed and shod.

In the Occupiers' parlance, I am very much one of the 99%.

Billy couldn’t be more different. He is an international superstar, has made many hit records and can fill stadia with thousands of adoring fans.

He lives in some splendour in the pretty county of Dorset, and his record loyalties alone are probably sufficient to maintain him in some style for the rest of his life.

He is definitely part of the 1%.

But despite these disparities, I would describe myself as reasonably content.

The Occupiers argue that I am wrong to feel this way. They say I should be seething with rage and resentment because Billy has a bigger slice of pie than I do.

They say I should demand that the state expropriates Billy’s wealth and redistributes it to the rest of us. And they argue I should be sulking in a tent in front of Sheffield Cathedral until I get my way.

I have lots of objections to this, not least the power it gives the state over the lives of ordinary people, and the strong doubts that such a system would be any more “fair” than what we have now.

But my biggest problem is that I cannot in my heart bring myself to resent Billy one penny of his wealth or one iota of his success.

He’s worked hard and has reaped the rewards – so good luck to him.

Billy’s music is not to my taste, and frankly I find the proletarian posturing faintly ridiculous, but a lot of people like his stuff and are prepared to pay hard cash to listen to it.

In fact Billy is the sort of hugely successful capitalist that we should all admire. Britain could do with more people like Billy.

The state, if it has any role in this at all, should be encouraging working class youngsters to emulate Billy’s success – not punishing them if they do so by confiscating the rewards of their hard work.

I hope this explains why I can’t stand in solidarity with the Occupiers – I just don’t feel the necessary degree of envy, resentment, bitterness and rage.

And I do wonder if a movement entirely predicated on such negative emotions can ever achieve anything positive.

Robbing the poor to pay the rich

2011-11-18T15:25:00.001Z

Oh the squeals of outrage this month when the government announced a modest reform to one of the biggest green rip-offs this country has ever seen.

You may not have heard of Feed-in Tariffs (Fits), but if you are lucky enough to live in one of the posher parts of town you’ve no doubt noticed your more well-heeled neighbours covering their roofs with solar panels.

The reason for the mad proliferation of solar panels, and to a lesser extent mini windmills, is that householders are being paid enormous subsidies to generate their own electricity.

The Fit scheme works a bit like Robin Hood – but in reverse. It effectively takes around £8bn from the poorest consumers in the country over the next 20 years and transfers the cash to well off people who can afford the capital costs of installing mini solar and wind power schemes.

The racket – for that is what it is - works like this; once householders have installed the solar panels, the power companies are forced to pay for the electricity they produce at a price more than six times the market rate, for a guaranteed period of 25 years.

The returns are so fantastic as to be far beyond the dreams of avarice. Some solar panel installers were recently boasting that a £12,000 solar panel system would pay for itself in little more than ten years and produce total returns over the life of the scheme in excess of £25,000.

Certainly, as an investment it promises to produce profits far in excess of anything the banks, building societies or stock market could offer – all entirely risk free, tax free and index linked against inflation.

Great if you can afford it. But what if you can’t? Well, tough! Consumers, including the very poorest, are expected to pay for this outrageous handout to the wealthy by way of a hidden ‘green’ tax on their fuel bills – about £13 a year on the average electricity bill.

Not surprisingly since the subsidy bonanza started in April last year, those lucky enough to have substantial sums in the bank have been climbing over each other to get their snouts in the trough.

Around 80,000 householders have taken advantage of the subsidies including Jude Law, Gary Neville and Mick Jagger, who have all installed solar panels on their multi-million pound homes.

Alarmed at the escalating cost, the government has now announced the Fit subsidies are to be cut by half - hence the bleats of complaint from everyone from Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth to solar panel installation companies and the CBI.

But if solar power is as cheap and efficient as the environmental groups pretend it is, then it shouldn’t need any subsidy at all.

And you would expect the CBI to understand that a rigged market is rarely an efficient one. The government generates no wealth itself, so one person’s subsidy necessarily has to be someone else’s tax.

But this isn’t just poor politics and stupid economics – it is morally wrong too.

For a government to take money from a freezing pensioner in order to give it to someone as rich as Mick Jagger, is nothing short of wicked.

Until the subsidy is scrapped entirely having solar panels on your roof should be seen as a badge of shame.

These people aren’t ‘green’ – just greedy.

Up yours, your Lordship

2011-11-18T15:21:00.001Z

You can do nothing worse to a lady of a certain vintage than make an ungallant and unnecessary reference to her advancing years.

And so it proved during a hilarious exchange in the House of Lords last week when former defence secretary Tom King mentioned the great age of Second World War veterans, for example, he said, his colleague, Baroness Trumpington.

The good lady’s reaction was priceless. She glared at him and then delivered what can only be described as a subtle variation of Churchill’s Victory salute.

King should realise that the generation that defeated Hitler - BaronessTrumpington was a code breaker at Bletchley Park - is not to be trifled with.

UPDATE - Occupy Sheffield evicts a homeless man

2011-11-17T21:27:00.001Z

I've been sent a response to my post earlier today about the eviction of a homeless man, Keith McMullen, from the Occupy Sheffield camp.

Rather than tack this on to the bottom on that post I thought if fairer to Occupy Sheffield to include it in a fresh post. New readers may need to go back to the previous entry for the full story so far.

I include this without substantial comment from me. I have no way of knowing if the serious allegations contained in Occupy Sheffield's statement about Mr McMullen are true, and the fact he is homeless makes it difficult to get his response to these charges.

I plan to mull over this and return to it later as it is fascinating the way conflicts of ideology, culture and, most significantly, social class, are being played out in the Occupy movement.

Here is Occupy Sheffield's statement in full:

We are responding to your blog post that is a result of your conversation with Mr McMullen this morning.

SinceOccupy Sheffield first arrived on the Cathedral forecourt we havebeen a magnet for homeless people for whom the area around theCathedral is a traditional stamping ground.

There have beenquite a few incidents involving them and street drinkers, mainlyminor, that we have been able to manage quite successfully. However,it has to be said that Mr McMullen has singly, created moredisturbance and fear than all the others put together.

Withoutdescribing every incident, we can say that he has managed tofrighten, intimidate and bully a significant number of Occupiers andtheir supporters since Occupy Sheffield began.

He has also beenunwilling to participate in the consensus decision making that is akey feature of how we organise and has unilaterally made decisionsabout, for example, who may or may not enter the camp - frighteningpeople away, attempted to take control of our safety team and behavedin an intimidating way towards women. He has also threatenedviolence.

He is not interested in the reasons why OccupySheffield have set up camp but stated that it is his intention todisrupt the camp. There are plenty of witnesses who are willingto testify to this effect.

Thismorning he was finally requested to leave the camp permanently, (this decision was subsequently ratified by a meeting at the camp this evening), as we areunwilling to accommodate someone whose stated aim is to activelydisrupt what we are attempting to achieve. We have tried many times,unsuccessfully, to peacefully discuss these issues with him. His behaviourtowards occupiers has proven to be unremittingly inappropriate andfrequently offensive.

Anyone who wishes to actively participate and contribute to the aims of the Occupy movement is welcome at the camp, including people who class themselves as homeless.

Ifyou would care to, we would be happy to talk to you further aboutthis particular incident, other matters related to our growingexperience of homelessness, street drinking and indigence inSheffield and of course, the reasons why we occupied the Cathedralforecourt in the first place.

OccupySheffield

Occupy Sheffield evicts homeless man

2011-11-17T13:47:00.001Z

This morning (Thursday November 17) I witnessed a homeless man being evicted from the camp of Occupy Sheffield, in front of the city’s cathedral.

I was walking past the camp shortly after 11 am when I noticed an altercation between a man in his 50s and a group of mainly younger men and women.

There was no violence on either side, but those ejecting the man subjected him to verbal abuse. I heard him called an “agent provocateur” and he was told angrily “we want rid of you”.

Once outside the camp he asked for his belongings to be brought to him. One of the younger men laughed at him and said: “What have you got? Is it named?” in a sarcastic tone of voice.

A few moments later the same man came out and threw a plastic bin bag containing a few items onto the ground saying: “I don’t know what they are paying you Keith, but whatever it is, it is not enough.”

He tried to speak to the Occupiers at the entrance to the camp, but they waved him away angrily saying he wasn’t welcome and should go away.

I waited a few moments and then approached him. He told me his name was Keith McMullen, aged 50, was homeless and had been living in the camp and helping with onsite security since shortly after it was established on November 5.

He was clearly angry and he told me he had been deprived of sleep for several nights, but he was coherent and I could detect no signs of drunkenness, drug abuse or mental disturbance.

I asked him why he had been kicked out. He said: “Because I disagree with what is going on in there, with the way the elite are running it. There are about half a dozen people taking all the decisions and the majority don’t get a look in.

“They’re ex-student types – moongazers I call them – who think they are better than the rest of us. They have absolutely no idea of what is going on with the ordinary people of Sheffield. They are not interested in the poor people who really need help.

“They don’t even sleep at the camp. They lay down the law and then toddle off to a nice warm bed in a comfortable house in the suburbs.

“I’ve been here every night. We have people coming down here in the middle of the night trying to steal the laptops, or get at the food, or just causing trouble and I’m here protecting the camp night after night – and they turn around and call me an animal.”

I asked him what the disagreement was about:

“They are using it for their own political ends. I don’t think the people of Sheffield are interested. But there’s lots of people who need help – genuine homeless people, not like some of that lot pretending to be homeless.

“We could use the tents to give these people a meal and bed for the night, but they are not interested.

“It has been brewing up for days. I’m not a violent man, but I flipped this morning and ended up screaming at them. I collapsed because of lack of sleep. One of them gave me a cup of water and said ‘I hope you choke on it’.”

He was on his own and no one seemed to be supporting him, so I asked him if he was a lone dissenting voice:

“No there are quite a few who feel like me. They are worried that we’ll out-vote them. I’ve been told they are bussing a load of protesters in from Brighton to vote us down.

“The Assemblies are a farce – the half dozen decide between themselves what to do and then it is rubber stamped. But the real people of Sheffield have no say.”

What about the allegation that he is a paid agent provocateur:

“Do I look like I am being paid?” (The short answer is no).

“I have no home, no job, no money. I live on benefits. I’ve got about 20 pence in my pocket.”

I asked him what happens now:

“I don’t know. I’m happy to debate it with any of them; in front of cameras if they want. But they don’t want to do that. They don’t want to listen to what I’ve got to say.”

There are a couple of things I should add here:

For reasons of full disclosure I should say that I’ve written about Occupy Sheffield before, both on this blog and in the Yorkshire Post, and I am not a fan.

I believe the Occupiers are misguided, and their Big Government, statist approach is exactly the wrong lessons to learn from the financial crisis. More borrowing, more spending and giving more power to the state over the lives of ordinary citizens is what got us into this mess in the first place.

But although I am critical, and the incident recounted above casts the Occupy movement in a poor light, I hope I have given an honest and straightforward account of what I witnessed and in my interview with Mr McMullen.

Second, if I was writing this for a mainstream publication I would endeavour to elicit a response from the Occupy campers so they could put their side of the story. Unfortunately, I have a job to do (I’m writing this in my lunch hour) and I don’t have time to do this.

However, I’m happy to publish any responses to this article here, or to link to other sites where responses have been published.

But I thought it important to publish this as soon as possible to give genuinely voiceless people, like Mr McMullen, the chance to be heard.

Memory of the summer

2011-11-15T14:35:00.001Z

Found these pictures on my camera on a grey November day.
I'd forgotten all about them.
They were taken in the early summer at Harlow Carr RHS gardens near Harrogate.
The colours cheered me up.

2011-11-15

Same old big statism from the Occupy movement

2011-11-11T13:08:00.001Z

The Occupy movement, which has swept across the developed world including several cities in Yorkshire, promises a new and exciting way of doing politics.

So this week I popped along to the ‘Peace Camp’ that has sprung up in the shadow of Sheffield Cathedral, to find out for myself.

What I found, beside the odd passing wino, were people who were polite, enthusiastic, engaged – and utterly clueless.

If you are expecting fresh, innovative thinking to deal with the financial crisis, then I’m afraid you are bound to be disappointed.

The philosophy of the protesters can be summed up by a hand-written sign on a bit of soggy, disintegrating cardboard at the entrance to the ramshackle collection of a dozen tents: “Marx was right!”

Instead of the ground-breaking, unorthodox deliberations I’d been led to expect, what I heard was the same tired old Big Government statism that has characterised the blinkered authoritarian Left for the past century.

Whatever the question is, the answer is always the same – more power to the state to control the lives of ordinary people, more spending, and more borrowing.

Isn’t that what got us into this mess in the first place?

I genuinely tried to get beyond the platitudes. For example the protesters say they are against capitalism and on the side of the poor.

I pointed out that capitalism has raised more people out of poverty than any system that has ever been tried.

Indeed, if you abandon capitalism the poor will inevitably suffer, as they have under every Marxist regime in the world from the Soviet Union to Zimbabwe. Blank incomprehension.

One chap told me that the richest 1% should pay a fair share towards society. Fine, but what do you mean by fair? I asked him how much the richest currently contributed towards total tax revenues.

He hadn’t a clue, but added that whatever it was, it wasn’t enough.

Here, courtesy of the Office for National Statistics, are the actual figures; the top 1% of earners pay about a quarter of all income tax and the top 10% pay more than half – that’s a lot of schools, hospitals and benefit payments.

If we “eat the rich” as the protesters suggest, or more likely increase their taxes to even more punitive levels so that they simply move their assets to more friendly jurisdictions, we’ll have a huge hole in the country’s finances to fill.

This is precisely what happened back in the 1970s when the then Chancellor Denis Healey cranked up taxes to 83%, relishing the “howls of anguish” from the rich.

The result was the sort of economic collapse that we’ve become familiar with under every Labour government before and since, and by 1976 the UK had to go cap in hand to the IMF to beg for a bailout.

Three years later Margaret Thatcher became Prime Minister and her Chancellors, first Geoffrey Howe and then Nigel Lawson, steadily cut the top rate of tax, initially to 60% and then to 40%.

Then as now the Left screamed that this was unfair and the rich should be made to pay more.

But here’s a curious thing – as the tax rates tumbled, the amount of tax paid by the richest 1% actually increased, from about 10% of total tax revenues under Healey to 14% in 1988 and 21% by 1997.

In other words by halving the top rate of tax, Thatcher’s administration doubled the amount paid by the top earners.

So the answer, unpalatable it might be to the protesters and their supporters in the media, the Church of England and the unions, is perfectly clear and straightforward: if you want the rich to pay more, then the best and simplest way of doing so is by dramatically reducing taxes.

The Euro on the brink

2011-11-04T16:28:00.000Z

Yesterday Europe descended into chaos, and there now must be serious question marks over whether the Euro in its present form has any future.

Yet only a few days ago jubilant European leaders were reassuring us that they had finally reached a lasting solution to the debt crisis that threatened to bring down the Eurozone.

That “lasting solution” has turned out to be worthless - just like the 14 other similar deals brokered since the crisis began –and it began to unravel before the ink was dry on the agreement.

Problems began within hours of the triumphant announcement when the Chinese, who were expected to bankroll the deal, made it clear that they were not prepared to act as “saviour” to bail out irresponsible and spendthrift Europeans.

And who can blame them, considering the fact that the average Chinese person is much poorer than the average European. Why should they give feckless Europeans their hard-earned cash, especially as they may never get it back?

But tragedy descended into farce when the Greek premier George Papandreou announced he planned to hold a referendum to give the Greek people the final say on the bailout deal.

Reaction across Europe was apoplectic. There’s nothing our European masters hate more than democratic accountability. “Ask the people! Are you mad?”

The French and the Germans threatened to withhold rescue funds and expel Greece not just from the Eurozone, but from the EU itself.

Such was the pressure from European capitals that it looked last night as though the Greek government had been forced to capitulate and abandon the referendum idea.

But the problems have not gone away. There is no guarantee that the Greeks can deliver the austerity package demanded by their European governors, and there is still a chance of disorderly default which could trigger a collapse of several European banks.

Amongst the confusion only one thing is clear – yet another ‘sticking plaster’ deal that fails to address the underlying problems dragging the Eurozone down is not going to work.

I take no satisfaction in any of this, because it is undoubtedly a disaster for Britain. Greece, Portugal and Ireland are effectively out of the game for the foreseeable future; Italy, Belgium and Spain are heading the same way and even France doesn’t look safe.

These are our major trading partners, and even though the problems have been caused entirely by their own foolishness, it is still bad news for British exporters.

And we’ve still had no apology from the Euro-fanatics, and their cheerleaders in the BBC, FT and Guardian, who came within a whisker of ruining our country by dragging it into the Euro.

Their blinkered zealotry has caused untold misery across Europe – broken lives, lost jobs, and ruined businesses.

Instead of burning Guy Fawkes this weekend, I’d like to see a revival of the mediaeval stocks in which we could place Blair, Mandelson, Clegg, Huhne, Heseltine and Clarke and all the rest and invite the citizens to pelt them with rotten fruit.

I’d pay a fistful of Euros to watch that.

Wasn't Robin Hood against taxes?

2011-11-04T16:21:00.000Z

After two weeks of dithering the Archbishop of Canterbury has, entirely predictably, come out as a supporter of the anti-capitalist protesters camped outside St Paul’s Cathedral.

In a further genuflection to fashionable left-wing opinion, Dr Rowan Williams also backed a ‘Robin Hood Tax’ that would see the state rake off a percentage of every financial deal.

Such a tax would prove ruinous to the City of London and the UK. International companies would simply shift operations to New York or Hong Kong.

But I’m baffled by the name of the tax. Wasn’t Robin Hood opposed to rapacious taxes imposed by an oppressive state?

I watched the TV series avidly as a boy, and I can’t recall a plot in which Robin petitioned the Sheriff of Nottingham to increase taxes on the people.

Running scared from the will of the people

2011-10-28T13:25:00.001+01:00

If you are ever lucky enough to venture into the belly of the beast at the European Commission headquarters in Brussels, you will probably be struck, as I was, by the number of young, very smart and talented people who work there.

They are sharp as a tack, each speak four or five languages and have degrees from the likes of Insead, Harvard and the Sorbonne.

I always think that if they decided to do something creative with their lives, like starting a business, instead of propping up the rotting bureaucracy of a doomed and dying regime, they could be world beaters.

But they are to a man and woman European zealots. They believe the elite that runs the European Commission knows what’s best for the ordinary citizens of Europe, whether we like it or not.

They will talk with animation of the way Europe was torn apart twice by world wars in the last century, and tell you with a messianic gleam in their eyes that the EU’s mission is to make sure it never happens again.

Much of this is admirable. Where it falls down is in the utter contempt in which they hold the views of the common folk.

They believe that citizens are simply too stupid to know what is good for them and their views can therefore be safely ignored.

Ask about the emphatic ballots in France and the Netherlands rejecting the much vaunted EU constitution, and they wave away the question in irritation and deny it was a vote against closer European integration.

Mention the growing tide of Euroscepticism in virtually every EU country and they’ll argue that people will eventually understand the benefits of “ever closer union” even if it happens against their express wishes.

They treat the European Parliament with ill-disguised disdain, but tolerate it as it gives them the patina of democratic respectability. But everyone knows that the real power lies in the unelected and unaccountable European Commission.

So a democratic deficit has opened up – the gap between what people want and what the bureaucrats who rule want to give us.

Currently there is much talk of attempting to solve the Eurozone crisis by creating a fiscal union – in other words a single treasury dictating taxes and spending across 17 countries, dominated by Germany.

Such a drastic move should be put to the people of the member states in referendums, or at the very least ratified by the national parliaments. But the Eurocrats don’t want that, because they know the idea will be rejected. They will do all in their power to stop the people having their say.

We’ve seen similar desperate evasiveness in UK. Each of the main political parties promised us a referendum on Europe, but in this week’s Parliamentary debate on the issue they combined to try to stifle the discussion.

It won’t work. More than 100,000 people signed a petition asking for the debate on a referendum and polls show that an astonishing 70% of the population would welcome a chance to vote.

Politicians and bureaucrats will eventually learn that they can’t go on forever running scared from the will of the people.

Part-time protesters

2011-10-28T13:07:00.000+01:00

Footage from thermal imaging cameras showed this week that 9 out of ten of the tents pitched by anti-capitalist protesters outside St Paul’s cathedral are left empty overnight.

Apparently the posh anarchists who’ve forced the closure of the Cathedral go home to mum every evening or check into nearby hotels.

One of the organisers of the Occupy London movement, Catherine Gerrity, explained that protesters were encouraged to “have a rest, take a day off”.

Eh? How do you take a day off from doing nothing? And is loafing about really such hard work that you need a rest from it.

In recent weeks we’ve had the “travellers” at Dale Farm who refused to travel, and now we’ve the “occupiers” in London who refuse to occupy.

Which reminds me – I must dig out my Idle Working Men’s Club t-shirt.

Childishness of the protesters

2011-10-21T15:48:00.002+01:00

One thing that struck me about the Dale Farm eviction – besides the entirely predictable violence and thuggery – was the childishness of the protesters.

They pelted the police with bricks, iron bars and bottles of urine, and then immediately complained that the eviction wasn’t as peaceful as they had hoped.

Meanwhile, a young woman chained to a concrete filled barrel whinges that she is cold and miserable because the police left her there overnight. Of course once the bailiffs cut through the chains and carted her off, she complained about that too. There’s no pleasing some people.

This is the sort of passive-aggressive behaviour – “It’s all your fault that I behave so badly!” – that you would expect from a hormonal 13-year-old.

Yet many of these protesters (few of those arrested actually lived on the site) are in their thirties and forties and although in many cases they’ve yet to find any gainful employment, they really should know better.

It is the infantile level of debate and the adolescent refusal to take any responsibility for the consequences of their own behaviour that is the defining characteristic of the professional protester.

Instead of making any attempt at making a cogent and persuasive argument, we get foot stamping petulance and unhinged hysteria.

If there is are strong reasons why the Dale Farm “travellers” should be exempt from a law designed to protect the countryside that applies to everyone else, I’ve yet to see them, despite the emotional incontinence on display from everyone from Vanessa Redgrave to Amnesty International and the United Nations.

Doesn’t equality and fairness mean anything to “progressives” anymore?

Much the same standard of thinking is on display in London where the Occupy the Stock Exchange movement protesters failed miserably to get anywhere near the Stock Exchange and decided to occupy the outside of St Paul’s instead.

So rather than bringing down world capitalism, it looks as though they will force the Cathedral to close by deterring paying visitors. Well done you soldiers for justice!

The protesters say there is no need for any public sector cuts because we can just go on borrowing more and more money to pay for the things we want. Sorry to break this to you guys, but even Ed Balls doesn’t believe that any more.

Oh yes, and they want to stop global inequality and an end to world oppression and a few other really nice things too.

I’m reminded of the New Seekers old hit: “I’d like to teach the world to sing in perfect harmony.”
But is this a political platform, or a cola advertisement?

In contrast to the hooliganism on display at Dale Farm, the St Paul’s protest has so far been entirely peaceful. They, of course, have a right to protest, particularly as they don’t appear to have anything better to do.

I’m not sure what they hope to achieve. I doubt if they’ve thought very hard about it.

But until they can construct some semblance of a coherent argument, it is hard to see how they can contribute meaningfully to a grown up debate on our future.

Gilad Shalit looked like a concentration camp victim

2011-10-21T15:47:00.002+01:00

In 2006 Palestinian terrorists infiltrated Israel and attacked an army post, killing two soldiers and kidnapping a third, Gilad Shalit.

This week, after five years in captivity in the Gaza Strip, Shalit was finally released by the terror group Hamas, in exchange for more than 1,000 Palestinian prisoners released by Israel.

Shalit had committed no crime, unlike the Palestinian prisoners who included many unrepentant killers and terror supporters.

Throughout his captivity Shalit was denied contact with his family and even the International Red Cross was refused access to check on his condition. In contrast the Palestinians were held in humane conditions, allowed medical care and visits and could challenge their convictions in the courts.

On release, pale and gaunt Shalit looked like a concentration camp victim. The healthy, beaming Palestinians looked like they’d just returned from holiday.

This snapshot tells you everything you need to know about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Vital mission for Archbishop

2011-10-19T14:19:00.002+01:00

The Archbishop of Canterbury Dr Rowan Williams showedimmense courage earlier this week when he confronted the loathsome tyrantRobert Mugabe about the persecution of Anglicans in Zimbabwe.

Dr Williams presented the Marxist dictator with a dossierdetailing appalling levels of abuse and demanded the authorities intervene tostop the attacks on innocent worshippers and clergy.

I’ve been sharply critical of Dr Williams in this columnbefore – not least over his frankly barking desire to see barbaric Sharia lawintroduced in the UK.

So I’m happy to give credit where it is due; Dr Williamsshowed just the right balance of steel and calmness, and had the moralauthority to make even an unrepentant murderer like Mugabe sit up and takenotice.

And I couldn’t help thinking that perhaps the Archbishop hasfound his true vocation – as a defender of the human rights and freedom ofworship of Christians around the world, whether Anglican or not.

Christians certainly need a champion to speak on theirbehalf, for wherever you look they are subject to brutal repression andviolence simply for following their faith.

Just this week in Egypt 24 Coptic Christians were killed andmore than 200 injured after the army, egged on by Islamic extremists, attackeda peaceful demonstration.

Copts, who make up about 15% of Egypt’s 82 millionpopulation, face routine discrimination, but since the “Arab Spring” sectarianattacks on worshippers and churches have intensified.

In Iran a Christian pastor, Yusef Nadarkhani, is facing thedeath penalty for refusing to convert to Islam – a story that has been entirelyignored by the BBC.

In Pakistan a12-year-old Christian girl was kidnapped and gang raped before being forced tomarry one of her attackers, according to a report this week from the AsianHuman Rights Commission.

In Iraq over half the Christian population – some 400,000people – were forced to flee the country in the face of Islamist pogroms, andin the West Bank Palestinian gangs connected to terrorist groups haveethnically cleansed many towns and villages of their Arab Christianinhabitants.

Wherever you look it is much the same story – Nigeria,Sudan, Somalia, Eritrea, Indonesia - Christian minorities face pitilesspersecution and violent attacks.

They desperately need support from the West and leaders ofunflinching bravery and determination to speak on their behalf.

Who better than Dr Williams?

And perhaps then he will belatedly come to understand thatSharia law, far from being a solution, is actually part of the problem.

The green tax con

2011-10-19T14:18:00.001+01:00

Families are facing the biggest drop in household incomes sincethe 1970’s, according to report by the Institute of Fiscal Studies publishedthis week.

A separate report from Deutsche Bank says green taxes willdrive one in four households into fuel poverty over the next four years.

I wonder if these two facts may in some way be related.

The truth is that soaring fuel bills, driven partly by the fashionableobsession with green taxes, are hitting ordinary people hard, and the poorespecially so.

According to Ofgem, green taxes add at least 4% onto gasbills and 10% onto electricity costs.

What do we get for this vast amount of money? Not a lot isthe answer. Green taxes certainly won’t save the planet, even if the planetneeds saving.

They are instead just a way of taking money from the poorand giving it to the rich.

In other words green taxes pour subsidies into the pocketsof large landowners so they can build inefficient and unreliable wind turbineson every hillside, which will never provide more than a tiny fraction of ourenergy needs.

If the government is looking for a quick and easy way ofeasing the pain for struggling families, the answer is simple; end thesubsidies and scrap the green taxes.

Alphabet soup of quango Britain

2011-10-07T13:01:00.002+01:00

This week I almost drowned in the biggest bowl of alphabet soup I’ve ever encountered – and my brain is still so stuffed full of various baffling acronyms that I’m struggling to make sense of anything.

The task, set to me by reader Ian Ingles from Hessle in East Yorkshire, seemingly was a simply one – to work out who is responsible for a new cycle route across the Yorkshire Wolds, who paid for it and who is accountable for how the money was spent.

Easy I thought. It is a cycle route for heaven’s sake. Just how complicated can it be?

Silly me; this is quango Britain and nothing is ever done without a myriad of committees, meetings, consultants and bureaucrats – including our pen-pushing friends from the European Union.

OK now for a taste of that alphabet soup; the cycle route, it turns out, was created by an ATP called VHEY as part of its YWDP, which has been partly funded by a LAG called the CWWW scheme which in turn is part of the LEADER programme.

Got that? No, I thought not, so let’s start again. The Area Tourism Partnership (ATP) is Visit Hull and East Yorkshire (VHEY), which runs the Yorkshire Wolds Development Programme (YWDP)which is funded by a Local Action Group (LAG) called the Coast, Wolds, Wetlands and Waterways (CWWW) scheme as part of the Liaison Entre Actions de Dévelopement de l'Économie Rurale (LEADER) programme set up by the European Union (EU).

Your head may be spinning, but I’m afraid we haven’t finished yet. The LEADER scheme is part of the RDPE (Rural Development Programme for England), which is funded partly by Defra (Department of Environment Food and Rural Affairs) and EAFRD (European Agricultural Fund for Rural Development), which is managed by yet another quango, Yorkshire Forward.

Most of these acronyms have their own website and presumably staff, premises and budget. And once you dip into one of these organisations you find dozens more. There is, for example, the Humber Rural Partnership (HDR), which runs the Rural Pathfinder Delivery Programme (RPDP), not to mention the Rural Access to Opportunities Programme (RAOP) and – heaven help us - the Yorkshire Green Triangle (GYT).

They are breeding like rabbits!

I’m all for rural development, but I don’t think employing thousands of bureaucrats – a good many of them located no doubt in Brussels – is going to help a country pub or farmhouse B&B survive the recession.

As it happens Mr Ingles has a special interest in all this. Some years ago he was the Senior Rights of Way Officer at Humberside County Council and he produced leaflets publicising similar routes for walkers, cyclists and horse riders.

“I’d walk the route myself, do a bit of research and show the results to my boss, and he said OK let’s do it. We didn’t have meetings, we just did it. Oh and it earned the council about £8,000 a year in profit.”

So did I rise to Mr Ingles’ challenge? Partly. I think a combination of about half a dozen quangos probably created the cycle route, but as to who is accountable for how the money is spent, I’m afraid I’ve no idea.

As for who pays for all of this; that’s an easy one – you do!

Blitzed metaphor

2011-10-07T12:59:00.001+01:00

Labour’s Angela Eagle was critical of the Chancellor’s speech at the Conservative party conference this week saying:

“Far from riding out the storm, George Osborne ripped out the foundations of the house as the storm was brewing by choking off the British recovery last autumn."

Ugh! This isn’t so much mixing metaphors as blitzing them full power in a blender.

The shadow Treasury Secretary is entitled to criticise the government, but can’t she do so without this horrible mangling of the English language?

Will the bombs go off next time?

2011-10-07T12:53:00.000+01:00

The loudest applause Nick Clegg received during his speech at the recent Lib Dem conference was when he made a robust defence of the Human Rights Act saying – as he put it, in words of one syllable – “It is here to stay”.

But surely even the most blinkered progressive can see the Act is not only absurdly unfair, but poses a very real danger to the British public.

Take just one example this week - the case of Siraj Yassin Abdullah Ali, an Eritrean convicted of helping an al Qaeda cell plot bomb attacks on London tube trains and buses, just two weeks after 52 people were murdered in the 7/7 atrocities.

It was bad enough that Ali was released midway through his already ridiculously lenient sentence, but to add insult to injury, activist judges have now ruled he cannot be deported, because to do so would infringe his human rights.

So now we have an unrepentant and unreformed convicted terrorist, who plotted to murder hundreds of innocent people, and who is considered by the authorities to be of the highest possible risk to the public, free in our midst.

He was pictured last weekend travelling on buses and tube trains without supervision.

We must be stark, staring mad.

Apparently, a number of his fellow 21/7 plotters are also fighting deportation to their native countries by using the Human Rights Act.

The way things are going they’ll soon be able to reform their terror cell and carry on where they left off, and there is little we can about it. Maybe next time their bombs will explode properly?

No other country in the world, including fellow signatories to the European Convention of Human Rights, would allow such a situation to continue.

In Germany, France or Italy, Ali would be packed off on the first plane home.

That’s because in those countries even the most left-wing judges are sensible enough to balance the “rights” of would-be killers, against the safety of law abiding citizens, and to come down on the side of sanity.

Our judges simply can’t be trusted to do the same – and that’s why the Act has to go, to be replaced by a British Bill of Rights.

David Cameron was elected on the back of a firm commitment to do exactly that and he should use the Ali case to fulfill his promise without delay.

And if Clegg and those cheering Lib Dems want to collapse the Coalition and fight an election on the basis of allowing foreign terrorists the right to stay in the UK on benefits, then let them.

Rather their funeral than ours.

Daft idea of the day

2011-10-07T12:47:00.000+01:00

The party conference season always produces its fair share of daft policy ideas seemingly dreamt up on the train up from London and jotted down on the back of an envelope.

Firmly in the “did he really say that?” category was Ed Miliband’s barmy idea for the government to categorise good and bad businesses, and to reward the former and punish the latter.

Isn’t that what customers do? And is there the remotest chance that some new quango would do it any more effectively?

But the prize for the most bonkers idea of the autumn definitely goes to Labour’s shadow culture secretary Ivan Lewis, who proposed a national licensing scheme for journalists who could be “struck off” if they misbehaved.

Set aside for a moment the sheer impracticality of such a scheme in the era of globalization, blogs and citizen journalism.

The key objection is that allowing only government-approved journalists to work as reporters is inimical to a free society. It is the sort of thing that happens in North Korea and Iran.

And it’s another good reason to make sure left-wing authoritarians like Lewis never get their hands on power.

The Today Programme - a study of bias

2011-09-22T14:08:00.000+01:00

BBC Radio 4’s Today programme used to be essential listening for anyone interested in current affairs. It set the day’s political agenda by tackling difficult issues and attracting big name interviewees.

But over the years it lost its edge, characterised by the crass amateurism of its journalists during the Dr David Kelly controversy, and the programme’s subsequent emasculation as result of the Hutton report.

On the odd occasion when I’ve tuned in recently it appears to consist of little more than presenters reading out a few news stories from that morning’s Guardian, and I’ve quickly retuned to something livelier.

But this week I gave a lift to an avid Today fan, and out of politeness listened – or more accurately endured – a big chunk of the programme.

First up was an overlong piece about the lack of female and ethnic minority Lib Dem councillors and MPs.

This fell firmly into the worthy but dull category of news, definitely snooze button fodder, but it precisely dovetails with the left’s obsession with “diversity”.

But while presenter Justin Webb was wagging a censorious finger at the white, middle-aged, middle-class men who run the Lib Dems, no one dared point out that the Today newsroom is also notoriously white, middle-aged, middle-class and male!

In fact the programme’s editor, Ceri Thomas, landed in hot water with the sisterhood last year when he suggested that women journalists weren’t tough enough to work for Today.

When one interviewee, a black man called Chris Lucas, gave a spirited and articulate defence of Lib Dem attempts to engage ethnic minorities, Webb sneered that he had obviously undergone media training. It was toe-curlingly patronising and condescending.

A few minutes later we were treated to a rant on the evils of capitalism by millionaire musician Ry Cooder, while he plugged his latest album (available for £8.93 on Amazon!). If he hates capitalism so much, why doesn’t he give his music away free? Needless to say this question wasn’t asked.

Next up was Thought for the Day featuring writer Rhidian Brook, who argued that higher taxes are morally good and should be used to teach selfish people to share the money that they earn.

This is a perfectly respectable viewpoint, of course. But try to imagine the BBC airing a similar piece from someone who believes that lower taxes are morally good, because they promote growth, create jobs and therefore help the poor. Not in a month of Sundays.

The next item was an interview with a former EU Commissioner Peter Sutherland, who was allowed to make the utterly preposterous statement, without challenge, that the Euro is doing “extremely well”.

Sutherland went on to argue, again without challenge, that the catastrophe caused by European integration could only be cured by even tighter European integration.

This sort of stuff is only spouted these days by Euro-fanatics on the extremist fringes of the debate. Even the Lib Dems now accept the Euro has been an unmitigated disaster. But to presenter, Evan Davies, these statements were so mainstream as to be unremarkable.

The centrepiece of the show was an interview with Nick Clegg, during which Webb relentlessly interrupted and badgered the Lib Dem leader with questions from a left wing perspective.

Webb seemed to be arguing that because our debt is not as bad as Italy’s or Greece’s, austerity measures are not needed, and therefore we can go on borrowing and spending as before.

If Clegg could have got a word in edgeways, I am sure he would have pointed out that the reason our debt is not as bad as basket-case Eurozone countries, is precisely because we’ve reined in spending before the economy collapsed.

The last item I heard was Webb and uber-liberal New York Times columnist Tom Friedman, guffawing over the stupidity of ordinary Americans because they oppose increased state spending.

Overall the partiality was glaring. Not one item was tackled from anything other than a distinct leftish perspective. No “diversity” here.

But I doubt this is intentional; these journalists are clearly intelligent and talented individuals. I suspect they don’t set out to be biased. They probably think they are being scrupulously fair. It is simply that within the BBC bubble, metropolitan, left-wing perspectives are so all pervading, that this gross unfairness is entirely automatic and unthinking.

Last Tuesday’s Today programme was a prime example of what Andrew Marr has described as the “innate liberal bias inside the BBC”.

Make up your own mind; You can listen to excerpts of the programme here.

Shouldn't 'travellers' obey the law too?

2011-09-16T13:04:00.000+01:00

It was badenough for the so-called “travellers” of Dale Farm in Essex when veteranleft-winger, and queen of lost causes, Vanessa Redgrave, backed their campaignto defy the green-belt planning regulations.

But now theUnited Nations has entered the fray on their behalf, even the chirpiest Irishlaw breaker must be in total despair.

Because if theUN is on your side you are certainly doomed. Nothing spells failure as clearlyas the enthusiastic backing from the bureaucrats of the UN.

Earlier thisweek something called the UN Advisory Group of Forced Eviction backed theillegal encampment in Essex and accused the local authority, Basildon council,which has fought a ten-year battle to uphold planning rules, of infringing thelaw.

And how is thecouncil infringing the law? Apparently, by trying to enforce it.

You may havethought that to an organisation like the UN, equality before the law would bean important principle of fairness – indeed a fundamental plank of a moderndemocracy.

But thetravellers – and their backers among the UN, Labour MPs, anarchist groups,luvvies such as Redgrave, and various Anglican and Roman Catholic Bishops - arenot the slightest bit interested in fairness or equality.

Instead, whatthey demand is preferential treatment for certain groups who choose in theirown selfish interest not to obey laws that don’t suit them.

The travellers,they argue, should not be beholden to laws that apply to the rest of thecommunity. Further, to expect them to behave like everybody else is apparently- yes you guessed it - “racist”.

And theirwell-funded, well-connected campaign has certainly had an impact. Any ordinarycitizen who illegally built on the greenbelt would have been shifted many yearsago. But a decade later the travellers cling on.

Finally, afterexhausting the legal process – thanks to copious amounts of legal aid – theyface eviction on Monday.

If the UN had aniota of credibility, its intervention may have carried some weight. But thetruth is it doesn’t. It has proved itself to be a corrupt and racistorganisation that doesn’t deserve to be taken seriously.

It is throwingits weight around in this case of imagined persecution, but when genuinepersecution was happening – and millions of people were murdered – in Darfur,Kosovo and Bosnia, it did absolutely nothing.

And let us neverforget that a little over a year ago it voted the blood-soaked tyrant, MuammarGaddafi, onto its “Human Rights Council” accompanied with nauseating praise forLibya’s ‘commitment to liberty and democracy”.

And while we areat it let us also recall that the UN also saw fit to open a conference,supposedly aimed at combating racism, with an unhinged anti-Semitic rant byIran’s lunatic-in-chief, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

In short theUN’s record on sucking up to dictators and failing to help persecutedminorities is nothing short of shameful. Basildon Council has the law and moralright on its side – and it shouldn’t take the blindest bit of notice what theUN says.

Scooby Doo - healthy lifestyle model?

2011-09-16T12:59:00.000+01:00

According to animportant announcement by the Department of Health this week, Scooby Doo is thehealthiest children’s cartoon, beating off stiff competition from Peppa Pig andBob the Builder.

And how do weknow this? Well, the department apparently paid “consultants” to sit through200 hours of children’s cartoons to record the physical activity of thecharacters as part of a £75,000 public health initiative.

And they decidedthat despite our hero’s fondness for Scooby Snax, he was the perfect role modelfor a healthy lifestyle, because he spent so much time running away frommonsters.

It is good tosee the government spending our hard-earned tax pounds so wisely isn’t it?

Andit’s not as though the Department of Health could possibly find anything betterto spend the money on anyway.

Verdict in favour of courts on TV

2011-09-12T15:17:00.002+01:00

In an earlier part of my career I spent a considerableamount of time sitting on the press benches in various courts around thecountry scratching away in shorthand recording events at the sharp end of ourcriminal justice system.

I learned two things; firstly that lawyers in general, andjudges in particular, although usually clever and sometimes positivelybrilliant, frequently have not the faintest idea about the law they aresupposed to implement.

Barely a week went by without the representatives of HerMajesty’s Press - who unlike m’learned friends had actually studied therelevant law - sending a polite note to “your Honour” pointing out that thedraconian reporting restrictions he had imposed at a previous hearing wereentirely illegal.

Black looks for all concerned; in my experience judges don’tlike being told what they can and can’t do.

The second thing I discovered was that the reality of lifein criminal courts was not at all like Perry Mason or Twelve Angry Men, or evenRumpole of the Bailey.

Moments of drama were rare indeed. Mostly it was the numbingtedium of long hours waiting for cases to start only for them to be eventuallypostponed.

The arresting police officer would be discovered to be onleave, or a file would be lost, or the defendant would be absent because he’dbeen sent on a six week Caribbean Cruise or African Safari by social services -and the whole shebang would be put off for another couple of months at vastexpense to the public purse.

I’ve often reflected that if Joe Taxpayer had the time orinclination to see what went on in the average crown court he would be shockedand dismayed.

For that reason I welcome the news that Justice SecretaryKenneth Clarke is considering televising some hearings in English and Welshcourts.

But the proposal to show only the final sentencing doesn’tgo far enough - the entire process should be filmed.

That way the paying public would witness the huge amount ofmoney wasted by delays and inefficiencies.

Citizens would also learn that whereas some defendants aretragic, damaged cases that would make the hardest heart bleed; others areunrepentant scumbags who should be sent down for a long stretch.

And yes, despite my cynicism, I’ll admit we’d also see agreat many decent, hardworking, talented individuals trying against the odds todeliver justice and to be fair to those in the dock.

The truth is that, thanks to activist and politicised judgesand ridiculously lenient sentencing, confidence in our criminal justice systemis at a dangerously low level.

Anything, such as showing what actually happens in court,that may redress that balance, should be welcomed.

And often it is only by sitting through every day of a case,listening to all the evidence and mitigation, that you can understand a judge’sreasoning.

So I give a thumbs up to Crown Court TV – and let’s face it, it’s bound to be moreentertaining that most of the tripe we have to put up with at present.

Morality tale

2011-09-12T15:13:00.001+01:00

My favourite story of the week was the news that Larry, therescue cat brought in by Number Ten to sort out Downing Street’s ratinfestation, has found himself a girlfriend.

Apparently Larry has taken to staying out all night, andthen sleeping it off through the day, after striking up a relationship withMaisy, a she cat who lives in the nearby St James’ Park keeper’s cottage.

Sadly there is no prospect of kittens – Larry went under thevet’s knife some time ago.

Still it is good to see Larry indulging in the sort ofbehaviour that will be instantly recognisable to many of the human inhabitantsof Westminster.

Victory has a thousand fathers...

2011-09-12T15:10:00.000+01:00

In war it is often noted that victory has a thousandfathers, but defeat is an orphan.

We have seen the truth of this saying this week withdevelopments in Libya.

No sooner had the rebels gained the upper hand in the civilwar than governments around the world rushed forward to claim the credit.

This month's “Friends of Libya” forum in Paris attracted nofewer than 60 countries all clamouring to demonstrate their support for thevictorious National Transitional Council.

It prompts the question – where were all these “friends”when Nato was desperate for men and materiel to carry out bombing raids insupport of the rebels over the last six months?

Nowhere to be seen is the simple answer. Russia and China,for example, remained staunch supporters of Gaddafi and opponents of Nato’sactions until the dictator’s position became hopeless, at which point theypromptly changed sides.

Yesterday both countries were falling over themselves torecognise the new Libyan government. Clearly, some bumper oil and constructionprojects are at stake and the Russians and Chinese will never let old alliancesget in the way of business.

Even America’s curiously passive president, Barack Obama,was content to “lead from behind”, leaving the British and the French to takethe prominent roles in Nato’s actions – although that didn’t stop his Secretaryof State Hillary Clinton muscling in on the victory photoshoot.

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon also turned up in Paris,although in truth the UN, as usual, was worse than useless. The only role theUN has in these affairs is to give murderous tyrants, such as Gaddafi, a worldstage on which to strut.

I’d like to think that the new Libyan government will rememberwho their true friends were when they desperately needed support. If so, thebulk of new contracts from the oil-rich nation will be struck with British andFrench firms – but I wouldn’t bank on it.

Those unscrupulous companies who greased the palms of Gaddafi’shenchmen to gain lucrative deals over recent decades will now be doing exactlythe same thing with the new incumbents.

And this goes to the heart of the problem. Of course Nato’sintervention can be seen as a success in that it avoided a possible bloodbathas Gaddafi’s tanks moved to crush the rebellion.

Certainly, David Cameron andWilliam Hague can take credit for their courage and determination to launchsuch a risky operation.

But there is no guarantee that the new Libyan governmentwill be any more sympathetic towards the values of freedom and democracy thanthe last lot. We may have just swapped one lot of anti-Western nutters foranother.

And I hope that success in Libya will not encourage ourgovernment to believe it can act as a world policeman in other conflicts. Wherenext? Syria, Zimbabwe, Bahrain?

This would be a big mistake, especially considering this month’s other news – the announcement of big cuts to the British defence budgetthat will eventually see the Army and RAF cut 7,000 and 5,000 postsrespectively.

We can’t make such cuts to our armed forces, and ask them todo more at the same time.

Perhaps when the next humanitarian crisis happens, we canexpect some other countries to carry the burden? Don’t hold your breath.

As for Cameron and Hague – they took a big risk and it lookslike it has paid off. But they shouldn’t push their luck.

Paying the price

2011-09-12T15:01:00.002+01:00

I’ve just returned from a short holiday in Northern Europemore skint than ever at this time of year.

Is it just me or are prices abroad now verging on theridiculous?

I mean £23 for a plate of mussels and chips, and a fiver for smallglass of beer?

No wonder the locals look so miserable – especially when youremind them that they’ll have to work into their dotage and pay ever increasingtaxes to ensure that their Euro-friends in Greece, Portugal and Spain canretire early.

Why scepticism should be at heart of science

2011-09-12T14:56:00.000+01:00

I was lucky enough at school to be taughtby an absolutely brilliant physics teacher.

He was an ex-military man, a stickler fordiscipline, but also with a wickedly dry sense of humour.

He managed to pull off that difficult trickfor a teacher – keeping order among his often-unruly charges, but also makinglessons tremendous fun.

Everything I learned about the scientificmethod began with him. He taught us how to design an experiment to test aparticular hypothesis, the importance of setting up a control, how to recorddata accurately and to write up the results.

He was quick to jump on anyone makinguntested assumptions. Just because one event invariably followed another, itdid not necessarily mean that the first event caused the second, he wouldexplain.

What I learned from him was that at theheart of science should be an unquenchable curiosity about the world around us,a sense of inquiry that would lead us continually to question conventionalorthodoxies.

He was especially scathing about what hecalled “received wisdom” and often mentioned the names of Galileo and Darwin asexamples of men who bravely followed where the science led them in the teeth offierce objections from the establishment.

He was above all a born sceptic – and Ithink he would have borne that moniker with pride.

Sadly, I think the state of modern sciencewould make my old physics teacher blow a gasket.

Because no longer is scepticism at theheart of the scientific method. In fact the word sceptic has become a vulgarterm of abuse and opprobrium. As far as the scientific establishment isconcerned, sceptical is absolutely the worse thing you can be.

We are now bluntly told that that in manyareas of the natural world, even something as complex and poorly understood asthe global climate, that the “science is settled” and there is no point inquestioning “received wisdom” or conventional orthodoxies as there is nothingnew to be learned.

I can just imagine my old teacher’s hacklesrising if any pupil had been rash enough to try to feed him this line in hisclassroom.

It is not just the scientific method thathas been corrupted, but the language about science too.

People who blindly follow one particulartheory are described as “believers” while those who express any doubts at allare denounced not just as sceptics but as “heretics” too.

I’m not sure when the language of mediaevalreligion began to be used in a modern scientific context, but it is quitecommonplace now, and betrays a very worrying mindset. I suppose it is a goodjob we don’t burn people at the stake any more.

I’d like to see a renaissance in science,and the rejection of blind belief in favour of rigorous scientific enquiry - andscepticism returned to its rightful place at the heart of science.

Of course throughout history science hasnever been entirely free of pressures from both secular and religious leaders.

But today science is more politicised thanever – especially so as the right kind of scientific findings can be used bypoliticians as an excuse to raise revenue through taxes.

So today we have a suspiciously cosy systemwhereby governments hand out billions in grants to certain, state approvedscientists, and in return those scientists come up with findings that allowgovernments to increase taxes.

Sounds decidedly fishy to me. I can’t proveanything, of course, but I suppose you could call me decidedly sceptical.

Proost!

2011-09-12T14:47:00.000+01:00

I’m taking a short break.

By the time you read this I hope to beensconced in a cosy bar somewhere, spending a few euros.

Although the way things are going at themoment, there’s no guarantee the euro will still exist by the time I get there.

The lame game of blaming Maggie

2011-09-12T14:37:00.000+01:00

It’sall Maggie Thatcher’s fault apparently.

That’sright – please don’t laugh – but before the embers of the flames sparked byrioters across the country even had a chance to cool, Baroness Thatcher wasfirmly put in the frame as one of the main people responsible, as far as ourleftie friends are concerned.

Try toforget for a moment, if you can, that the teenage yobboes strolling down thehigh street with 52 inch 3D televisions tucked under their arms weren’t evenborn the last time Maggie held power almost 21 years ago, and that we have had13 years of socialist rule in the intervening years.

The“Maggie’s fault” excuse was dutifully trotted out alongside a whole litany oflame and familiar justifications by left-wing apologists for simple thuggery.

Youprobably know the script by now – we can’t blame the poor, downtrodden youthsbecause social inequalities simply force them to steal televisions and trainersand lap top computers. I mean, what other choice do these poor darlingspossibly have?

It’snot their fault – it’s all because of racism, poverty, unemployment, “savage Tory cuts” etc. Blah, blah, blah.

Hilariously,I even heard the cost of long-term smart phone contracts cited as one reason“the youth” were rioting.

Let’snail “the savage cuts” lie first of all. No matter what the BBC and theGuardian may tell you, “the cuts” can’t be blamed for the riots, quite simplybecause there haven’t been any cuts – savage or otherwise.

Whatwe are seeing is an extremely modest – about one per cent a year – reduction inthe growth of public spending – and what savings there are have not even beenimposed yet. So “the cuts” excuse falls at the first hurdle.

Howabout “poverty” then? The big problem with this excuse is that the riotersaren’t poor – certainly not in the material sense anyway – thanks to our lavishsystem of benefits.

Ifthey were poor, they’d be looting grocers and bakers, not luxury goods shops. Ifthey weren’t smashing their way into Comet and Footlocker to steal, they’d beshopping there.

Neitheris unemployment an excuse. There are thousands of vacancies in London andelsewhere, usually filled by Poles, Lithuanians and other foreigners. Our crazybenefits system actually penalises the unemployed if they decide to take a job.

Sowhat are the reasons for the disorder? Number one must be family breakdown. Ifover recent days you’ve watched television pictures of 11-year-olds smashingtheir way into wrecked jewellery shops and asked yourself “where are theparents?”, the answer in many cases is there aren’t any – not in the pluralanyway.

Morethan 80% of homes on the notorious Broadwater Farm estate are fatherless. Insome ways this is no surprise, because for 30 years we’ve had a benefits systemthat encourages fecklessness and punishes traditional two parent families.

Perhapsinstead if we recognised marriage in our tax and benefits system and rewarded coupleswho stick together and take responsibility for their offspring, we could atleast start to reverse this destructive trend.

Theother much-needed reform of benefits is simple, radical and has been proven towork. Work must be become an obligation before the unemployed receive benefits.No work means no money – it’s that simple. Perhaps after 40 hours cleaning offgraffiti “the youth” will be too tired to smash up Carphone Warehouse?

One ofthe many depressing interviews over recent days was with a couple of 17-year-oldgirls, drinking a bottle of stolen wine at 9.30 in the morning, who had justtaken part in the Croydon riot.

Onesaid: “It’s the government’s fault. I don’t know. Conservatives, whoever itis. It’s the rich people who’ve got businesses and that’s why all thishappened.”

The sad thing is that, given a slight change oflanguage and a posher accent, this is indistinguishable from the guff that hasbeen trotted out on our television screens and newspapers by left-wing analystsevery day.

Proof that the left not only left us economicallybankrupt, they are morally bankrupt too.

Obama learns financial lesson

2011-08-10T15:44:00.001+01:00

“The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people’s money to spend”, according to a quote attributed to Baroness Thatcher.

In Briton we have such bad short term memories that we have to re-learn this painful lesson every few years – almost every time, in fact, that we are foolish enough to elect a Labour government, most recently with the Brown/Balls era that brought us to the brink of national bankruptcy.

But for Americans to see their country on its knees as a result of reckless and out of control spending must be a novel and distressing experience.

This week the US avoided economic catastrophe by the skin of its teeth when President Barack Obama signed a bill to raise borrowing limits, just a few hours before the country was due to default on its £8.7 trillion worth of debts.

That the world’s most powerful economy is in such a mess is a matter of concern not just for Americans, but for the rest of the world too.

Unless the US can rebuild on sounder footings, the impact will be felt in every household on the planet.

And although the US narrowly avoided the calamity of default this week, it doesn’t mean it is out of the woods yet.

In fact when news of the debt deal emerged, the stock markets suffered severe falls and the credit agencies warned that they may still deprive the US of its top AAA ranking, which would push up the interest it pays on its loans.

This is because the problem with the US economy isn’t that it is not borrowing enough, but that over the years it has borrowed way too much.

Of every dollar the US government spends, it now borrows 40 cents – much of it from China.

It has been fascinating to watch from this side of the Atlantic as Obama has put left wing economic theory into practice.

According to Keynesian dogma, during times of recession the government must increase spending to boost economic growth.

So from 2008 Obama pumped about 800 billion dollars into the US economy in a “stimulus plan”.

Shadow chancellor Ed Balls, the man largely responsible for our own economic collapse, has regularly praised Obama’s approach and criticised coalition policies for cutting “too deep, too fast”.

But what did American taxpayers get in return for the government spending their money? Not a lot as it has turned out.

Growth in the US is even more sluggish than in the UK – just 0.4% in the first quarter of this year – while unemployment at 9.2% and rising, is far higher than in Britain.

In other words the Keynesian experiment has proved to be a miserable failure.

The money was wasted.

And perhaps if those 800 billion dollars had instead remained in the pockets of the people who earned them in the first place, they would have been spent more productively and wisely?

Now we know what doesn’t work, perhaps we can all try something we know that does – smaller government, less public spending and lower taxes to stimulate economic growth.

And as Baroness Thatcher could have told Obama – you can’t go on forever spending money that you don’t have.

History lesson

2011-08-10T15:42:00.000+01:00

Polly Samson, mother of jailed student rioter Charlie Gilmour, complains that her son is locked up in his cell for 23 hours a day.

Er – that’s what happens when you go to prison, Polly. And if your son goes around attacking people and property, what do you expect?

But perhaps some good will come of Gilmour’s incarceration. He spent his schooldays attending £27,000-a-year Lancing College before studying history at Cambridge University.

Yet such was his profound ignorance he professed he had absolutely no idea what the Cenotaph was and what it stood for, when he swung from it during the riots.

Is it too much to hope that he will receive some kind of useful education from the old lags at Wandsworth Prison - something his teachers and lecturers have singularly failed to impart?

Hard times in a tough job

2011-08-10T15:38:00.001+01:00

There must be few jobs in the country that are as valuable to society as that of probation officers – and few jobs that are as tough to do.

At its best the probation service plays a vital role in the criminal justice system, preventing young offenders from becoming hardened criminals and persuading old lags to change their ways and stick to the straight and narrow.

I have my doubts, expressed in this column numerous times, about the efficacy of so-called “tough” community sentences, and unlike many who work in the criminal justice system, I do believe that prison does indeed work – not least because it removes offenders from communities and gives their victims some small respite.

To put it in a nutshell - little Johnny Scumbag can’t mug your granny while he is safely locked inside.

That’s not to say that in some cases community sentences may be appropriate – but if they work or not is almost entirely dependent on the professionalism and skill of the probation officer at the sharp end.

A good probation officer shouldn’t be an offender’s friend – but a stern taskmaster who ensures the sentence really is tough, and who challenges criminals to turn their lives around.

But they can only do that in face to face encounters with offenders – not sitting in an office filling out forms and ticking boxes.

That’s why the report this week from the Commons Justice Committee was so shocking and depressing.

The inquiry found that probation officers spend as little as a quarter of their time directly dealing with offenders – a figure MPs said was “staggering”.

The report, based on evidence from serving probation officers, went on to criticise the “tick-box, bean counting culture” that left staff filling in paperwork, rather than helping to rehabilitate criminals.

The Committee questioned whether the National Offender Management Service (Noms), formed in 2004 with a merger of the prison and probation services, was delivering good value for money and giving probation trusts the support and freedom they need.

Particular concerns were raised about the “micro-management” by Noms, which required probation staff to spend a great deal of time filling in forms to comply with the agency’s targets.

Teachers and medical staff also have a deal of paperwork to contend with – but imagine the outcry if they spent 75% of their time away from pupils and patients.

Justice Secretary Kenneth Clarke acknowledged the problem and said the government was already addressing it by reducing the number of targets and giving probation officers back their professional discretion.

Let’s hope that is the right course. Confidence in the criminal justice system has been badly knocked in recent years, largely thanks to activist judges and soft sentences, and if it is to be restored we need a tough and rigorous probation service.

And the best way of achieving that is to allow probation officers the contact time with offenders to really make a difference, rather than filling out endless forms.

Northern big 'eads

2011-08-10T15:35:00.000+01:00

News this week that northerners have bigger brains than southerners won’t exactly have come as a surprise to readers of this newspaper.

We knew that all along, didn’t we folks?

But scientific backing for this northern truism arrived in the guise of findings by Oxford University researchers.

They analysed 55 skulls from around the globe and found that people from areas further from the equator had more grey matter and larger eyes than those from sunnier climes.

They reckon that this is because in low light conditions in the north, the brain and eyes have to work harder to see a good level of detail.

They spoilt their conclusions slightly by stating that just because our brains are bigger, it doesn’t necessarily mean we are more intelligent.

Are they trying to call us big headed? That’s fighting talk where we come from.

On that point the researchers have got it wrong.

Northerners are clearly cleverer than southerners – it is just a case of waiting for science to catch up with what we know in our hearts (and big brains) is the truth.

Don't forget the rest of the news

2011-08-10T15:30:00.001+01:00

Amid all the hysteria over the hacking allegations at the News of the World several other major news stories have dipped below the radar – the famine in the Horn of Africa, the stalemate in the ill-fated Libyan adventure, and ,not least, the possible imminent collapse of the world economic system.

Sure, unethical and possibly illegal things happened at the now closed Sunday tabloid, and if anyone is proven to have broken the law they should of course face the consequences.

But it’s hard not to avoid the conclusion that the adolescent glee with which many politicians have greeted Rupert Murdoch’s embarrassment is a simple case of revenge – a payback for all the times the red tops have exposed corruption and perversion among the country’s elite.

And beneath the manufactured outrage there clearly lies a sinister agenda to silence media critics and investigative journalism in some quarters.

Take for example Lord Kinnock’s ominous call this week for increased state control over newspapers to ensure “balanced” coverage.

Beware sanctimonious politicians who are intent on using events at News International as cover for a self-serving assault on the freedom of the press.

Back in the real world probably the biggest story of the year – and possibly the decade – is the economic crisis that threatens to dwarf even the terrible financial collapses of 2008.

In the US President Barack Obama is locked in negotiations with congressional leaders to raise America’s 14.3 trillion dollar debt ceiling. Unless a deal is reached by August 2 – and there is little sign of an agreement so far – the US will go into default, with potentially catastrophic consequences that will reach around the entire globe.

Put simply it would mean that the world’s biggest economy would be unable to pay its bills.

Things are hardly any sunnier on this side of the Atlantic. This week leaders of the Eurozone countries met in Brussels to hammer out a deal on the Greek debt crisis.

Again no solution – certainly not a long-term one – is in sight. Greece needs about another £97 billion bail-out – after a similar payment just over a year ago - just to stay afloat for another few months. The debt-ridden country has no hope of ever paying back the money.

German and Dutch taxpayers are becoming increasingly fed up of throwing good money after bad with no end in sight, and their governments want the banks and private financial institutions to share the pain by allowing Greece to partially default on its debt.

But the banks warn that if this happens the creditor banks could be destroyed and Portugal, Ireland, Spain and Italy will be dragged down the same plug hole.

The only viable solution is for Greece to leave the Eurozone, devalue its currency and default on its debts and try to rebuild its shattered economy through exports.

But Europe’s leaders are resisting this obvious course of events because it would mean the end of the Euro and therefore the political dream of a United States of Europe.

So expect another “sticking plaster” temporary solution that will cost European taxpayers dearly without actually helping the Greeks.

We live in perilous times. If things do go belly up in the US and Europe the resulting calamity will affect every one of our lives – and it will relegate the scandal at the News of the World to a footnote in history.

Woman of the week

2011-08-10T15:25:00.003+01:00

My woman of the week is definitely Wendy Deng, wife of News International boss Rupert Murdoch.

When some posh anarchist and “alternative comedian” tried to attack her 80-year-old husband, Ms Deng thwarted him with a terrific open palmed slap that was as ferocious as it was accurate.

I’d love to see Miss Deng let loose on all the other ranting, humourless, left-wing “comedians” that infest BBC Radio 4 every night of the week.

That would be worth paying the licence fee for.

It might also be funny – which is more than you can say for their shows.

Why 'savage' spending cuts aren't savage at all

2011-07-14T17:55:00.001+01:00

So, how are you managing to cope in an age of “draconian” and “savage” government spending cuts?

Sold the children into slavery yet? Applied for a place at the local workhouse? Chopped up your granny for firewood?

I doubt it, because despite all the hysteria and hyperventilating by the unions and their media allies about the brutal nature of the cuts, there actually haven’t been any yet - and those that are planned are modest in the extreme.

In real terms the government plans to shave just one per cent per year off its budget over the next few years, so by 2015 we will return to the level of spending we had in 2007.

Funny, I don’t remember starvation in the streets and mass homelessness back in 2007, despite the then Labour government’s best efforts to bankrupt the country.

Far from paying off the national credit card, as some commentators would have you believe, the current government is planning to add many hundreds of billions of pounds to the debt – a bill that will eventually have to be paid off by our children and grandchildren.

We are, in effect, stealing from future generations in order to fund profligate and unnecessary spending today.

What the coalition government does intend to do is to gradually reduce the frighteningly high deficit – that is the difference between what we earn and what we spend each year, and therefore the rate at which we add to the total national debt.

Under the current government’s plans we’ll still be adding to the debt every year, although at a reduced rate than under Labour’s crazed spending spree.

The fact that the majority of the population fail to grasp this simple point is a terrible indictment of my trade – journalism – in failing to explain some quite straightforward facts.

The resulting confusion has been exploited by Labour and the unions to push the barefaced lie that that cuts are somehow extreme and cruel.

For example a ComRes/Institute of Economic Affairs opinion poll this week asked people if the government was planning to keep the national debt the same, reduce it by £350bn, or increase it by £350bn, over the next four years.

An astonishing 70% thought the debt was being reduced and only 9% correctly stated the debt was massively increasing.

This is a depressing finding, but the same poll provided some reasons for optimism.

It found a growing realism among the general public, and particularly amongst the young, that we cannot continue spending money that we don’t have.

For example the IEA’s plan to reduce public spending to 30% of GDP (rather than 40% under government proposals) was backed by 70% of respondents, and 55% believe government spending should be 35% of GDP or lower.

Significantly, younger respondents were the most radical of all, with 67% of under 25s backing big cuts in government spending.

I suppose this is only to be expected, as it is the young people who have been landed with the enormous bill as a result of their parents’ selfish and wilful refusal to live within their means.

What this demonstrates is that despite all the noise created by the beer-bellied placard wavers on recent demonstrations, the general public is overwhelmingly supportive of the cuts and many want to see them go much deeper and quicker to rescue the country from the mess Labour left us in.

We know as a proven fact that the best way of promoting economic growth, and helping the poor, is by reducing taxes.

And the best way of reducing taxes is by reducing government spending.

So perhaps the answer lies in a smaller, leaner state, much lower taxes, and hard working, self-reliant citizens who are allowed to keep more of the wealth they create to spend or save as they wish.

That sounds like a future we can all believe in.

If you don't want to fight - don't join the navy

2011-07-07T14:26:00.000+01:00

A while ago I visited an ancient Meeting House run by the Society of Friends.

I’m not a Quaker, but an open day at a building that has been in continuous use as a place of worship for more than 300 years was too good to miss.

I fell into conversation with an elderly gentleman who, it turned out, was something of an authority on Quakerism in Yorkshire, and he told me of the terrible persecution suffered by Friends, which was only partly mitigated by the passing of the Act of Toleration in 1689.

He was about the same age as my father, so I plucked up the courage to ask him what he did in the war, and unsurprisingly he answered he’d been a conscientious objector.

I admired the strength he gained from his faith, but couldn’t help thinking that at a time of national peril, you can only afford to be a pacifist if you are prepared to accept someone else fighting on your behalf.

After all, if all young Britons had declared themselves unwilling to fight in 1939, we’d have all ended up speaking German and looking on helplessly as our Jewish neighbours were dragged off to the gas chambers.

Perhaps he read my thoughts because he said: “It wasn’t an easy decision, you know. We were well aware that even the bread in our mouths was put there as a result of violence.”

At the time Hitler was trying to starve Britain into submission, and the Royal Navy was hunting U-Boats, and sinking them where it could, to allow safe passage for the grain boats from Canada.

Although I disagreed with him, I couldn’t but help to admire and respect the moral seriousness with which he approached this difficult dilemma.

I’m afraid I can’t say the same for Michael Lyons, the Royal Navy medic jailed this week for refusing rifle training on moral grounds.

The big difference is that Lyons wasn’t conscripted – he joined the navy of his own free will.

What did he expect to be doing there? There is a big fat clue in the phrase “armed forces”. It couldn’t have come as a complete surprise to him to be asked to pick up a rifle.

In fact Lyons served for six years without a problem until, shortly after being posted to Afghanistan, he decided he had a moral objection to bearing arms, on political, rather than religious, grounds.

There are perfectly good arguments to be made in favour of pacifism, and the Quaker conscripts of 70 years ago were forced to make agonising choices.

But for people like Lyons in modern Britain the choice is far simpler – if you don’t have the stomach to defend your country, then don’t join the Royal Navy.

Clipboard man vs the Women's Institute

2011-07-07T14:20:00.000+01:00

More evidence that Clipboard Man is alive and kicking; members of the Women’s Institute have been banned from tending the flower beds on a roundabout - in case they get knocked over.

Spelthorne Borough Council in Surrey decided to scrap the floral display on the Shepperton war memorial as a cost cutting measure.

So members of the Upper Halliford Women’s Institute stepped in and offered to draw up a rota to keep the flowers tended at no cost to council tax payers.

But Conservative councillor Robin Sider – yes I’m afraid Clipboard Man infests the Tory party too – decided it was too dangerous and turned down the offer on health and safety grounds.

Julie Bloomfield, president of the local WI, pointed out that her members were capable of looking both ways before stepping off the pavement and that they “don’t all have Zimmer frames”.

Quite right. In my experience WI members are competent, and occasionally formidable, characters who wouldn’t be deterred from tackling something they felt needed doing by the difficulties of crossing a minor road.

And aren’t their public spirited actions exactly what David Cameron’s Big Society is all about? Not while Clipboard Man can help it, it’s not.

A monument to union folly

2011-07-06T14:05:00.001+01:00

In the centre of Sheffield is an unremarkable 1980s office block; its angular lines of glass and steel making it an incongruous neighbour to the classical splendour of the magnificent City Hall that lies next door.

The years have not been kind to this symbol of modernism. It remains empty and forlorn; weeds choke the abandoned forecourt and the buddleias run riot in the once carefully tended flowerbeds.

There is certainly little sign from its dilapidated appearance that this was once one of the most important buildings in England – the beating heart of what was widely known as the Socialist Republic of South Yorkshire.

For a few short years in the 1980s this was the UK headquarters of the National Union of Mineworkers. So grand and powerful was the NUM that locals nicknamed the building Camelot, and it is where “King” Arthur Scargill held court, plotting the overthrow of capitalism and the downfall of his arch nemesis, Margaret Thatcher.

It didn’t work out quite like that. Instead Scargill blundered into a catastrophic year-long strike that destroyed his union and broke the political power of the industrial working class for ever.

Not that Scargill suffered unduly – although his members certainly did. The joke at the time was that he started the strike with a big union and a small house, and finished it with a small union and a big house.

Membership of the NUM shrunk from 140,000 to little over 3,500 during his time as leader and far from halting pit closures, the strikes accelerated them.

Any chief executive with a record like that would be sacked, but Scargill enjoys the El-Presidente-for-life tenure rarely seen outside banana republics and North Korea.

Scargill’s spirit lives on today in the big public sector unions that are determined to inflict misery on the paying public with a new wave of strikes.

The new militants are not miners, dockers and lorry drivers, but middle class teachers, civil servants and town hall pen pushers.

They may lack the clout of the old industrial unions, but they defend their taxpayer funded entitlements and cushy sinecures with a selfish tenacity that would make your average Barnsley miner blush for shame.

As in the 1980s, the new strikes are overtly political. The aim, frequently openly expressed, is to bring down a democratically elected government.

To the leaders of these unions, the interests of the members don’t really matter. Like the miners before them, they are just cannon fodder to be chewed up in the new class war.

But one thing is certain. Whatever happens, no matter how disastrous the impact of the strikes, the union leaders won’t suffer. They’ll still have their fat salaries and lavish pensions. Like Scargill they are set up for life.

I can never walk past the old NUM building without thinking of the Percy Bysshe Shelley poem that tells the story of “traveller from an antique land” who stumbles across the shattered remains of an ancient civilisation.

The head of a statue, showing “the sneer of cold command”, lies half buried in the ground and on an empty plinth are these words: “My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings: Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!”

Nothing beside remains except the “lone and level sands” that stretch far away.

The latest plans for the NUM building is to turn it into an archetypical capitalist venture – a casino - which at least would be an amusing twist in the saga.

But perhaps it should be left to rot, like Ozymandias’s statue, a powerful monument to man’s hubris and the ephemeral nature of political power.

And perhaps it would give passing union members pause for thought, before they blindly march over a cliff at the behest of their leaders, like the miners did for Arthur Scargill.

Greek tragedy for Eurocrats

2011-07-06T14:03:00.000+01:00

The general consensus among economists – both on the left and right - is that Greece is financially doomed.

The country is simply unable to pay its way – it has zero growth, a bloated public sector and debts that are so catastrophically large that, even if the economy recovered, they may never be paid off.

So serious are the country’s problems that the only solution – sharp austerity measures – are actually making the situation worse, by sucking demand out of the economy and depressing economic activity even further.

So Greece can’t go on borrowing and spending at the current rate, but reducing spending - as demanded by European leaders - reduces the chance of any recovery through growth.

It is a classic lose-lose situation.

So much is generally agreed - the differences emerge in what should be done about it.

For the Eurocrats in Brussels, Greece must be saved from national bankruptcy whatever the cost to European taxpayers.

They raise the fear of “contagion” – that if Greece is allowed to fail, the crisis will spread to Portugal, Spain and Ireland, triggering a general banking collapse on a scale not seen in modern times.

But in reality their real worry is the collapse of the euro will end the dream of ever closer political and monetary integration. They are driven by political, not economic, considerations.

So they are pressing this week at an EU summit for a second bail out in the region of 120 billion euros – following hard on the heels of the first 110 billion euro rescue fund agreed only last year - to keep the Greek economy afloat for another few months.

And what then? Well in all likelihood further Eurozone bail outs will be required regularly until the crack of doom, or until German taxpayers finally decide they have had enough.

There is already a simmering rebellion amongst Germans angry at having to work until their old age so Greek public sector workers can retire early and collect their pensions.

The alternative is for Greece to default on its debts by informing its creditors that it can only pay a proportion – say 50% - of what it owes.

The country then leaves the euro, allowing its currency to devalue, thereby boosting exports and economic growth.

This at least gives the Greek people a chance of a future through an export-led recovery.

This of course would spell the end of the dream of a political and economic United States of Europe – and that is why the Euro-fanatics will fight tooth and nail to stop it from happening.

Match point for Clipboard Man

2011-07-06T13:58:00.000+01:00

There’s been a hotly contested match at Wimbledon - between officials at the All England Club and the Health and Safety Executive.

First the club served an ace by shutting down the giant screens on Murray Mount on health and safety grounds. People might slip and hurt themselves on the wet grass, they said.

This drew a stinging backhand return from HSE chief executive, Judith Hackitt, who ridiculed the ban saying: “People have been walking up and down wet grassy slopes for years without catastrophic consequences.”

Ian Ritchie, All England Club chief executive, replied with a thumping overhead smash: “I am flabbergasted that somebody who is looking after health and safety thinks this isn’t a problem.”

He insisted they would pull the plug on the screens again if it rains.

This is huge fun – even more entertaining than the tennis so far – but there is a serious point.

After many years of ceaseless nannying, HSE executives have belatedly realised that they are widely seen as killjoys. So they are attempting to rebrand themselves as dealers in plain common sense.

Their hackles rise whenever anything is banned for “health and safety” reasons because they feel they are unfairly blamed, and I suppose they have a case.

Clipboard Man will use the “health and safety” card whenever he feels like spoiling someone’s fun.

But who is responsible for this ridiculously risk-averse culture in the first place?

Another piece of sharp practice by Hari?

2011-06-28T15:27:00.002+01:00

The Twittersphere is alive today with claims that the Independent’s award winning columnist Johann Hari cut and pasted quotes from other sources to use in his interviews.

Go here or here for a summing up of the charges and here for Hari’s response.

Hari says that he used the interviewee’s own writing when they summed up his/her thoughts better than the quotes actually given in the interview.

His detractors argue that this defence is undermined by the fact that he didn’t attribute the quotes correctly, used the work of other journalists without credit, and gave the impression that the words had actually been said to him by using phrases such as “then he says”.

This may spark an interesting debate about journalistic ethics, and I will be interested to see how it plays out, but I enter the fray only to point out another curious piece by Hari that might indicate a bit of sharp journalistic practice.

In an article he wrote in March on the economy, Hari made an embarrassing blunder by confusing the deficit and the debt.

This is an absolute howler - it is a bit like not knowing the difference between your overdraft and your mortgage.

He was quickly pulled up on it, for example by Peter Hoskin of the Spectator here.

Here is the relevant quote from Hari’s piece as quoted by Hoskin:

"Here’s the lie. We are in a debt crisis. Our national debt is dangerously and historically high. We are being threatened by the international bond markets. The way out is to pay off our debt rapidly. Only that will restore 'confidence', and therefore economic growth. Every step of this program is false, and endangers you."

Hoskin pointed out that no one is suggesting we pay off our debt rapidly, but that both the government and Opposition plan to reduce the deficit, but at slightly different rates - a very different thing.

But if you click through to Hari’s blog now the post has been edited and now reads:

“Here’s the lie. We are in a debt crisis. Our national debt is dangerously and historically high. We are being threatened by the international bond markets. The way out is to eradicate our deficit rapidly. Only that will restore “confidence”, and therefore economic growth. Every step of this program is false, and endangers you.”

See the difference? The word “debt” has been quietly changed to “deficit” to correct the blunder.

There is nothing wrong with putting right a mistake, or course, but online etiquette suggests you should make it clear to users when you have made a correction.

As it stands it looks as though Hoskin has got it wrong and is misquoting Hari, when that is not the case.

Clipboard Man still riding high

2011-06-18T11:24:00.006+01:00

How long have children been flying kites on the beach? And when was the last time anyone came to serious harm as a result?

And since when did gardening in a pair of shorts become a dangerous activity?

Anyone reading the Yorkshire Post the past week would be forgiven for thinking they had picked up a spoof edition by mistake, because the two stories mentioned above featured prominently.

First came news that East Riding Council had introduced new health and safety bylaws imposing a £500 fine on anyone found flying a kite on the beaches at Bridlington, Hornsea and Withernsea.

Locals were astonished. Withernsea town councillor Terry Render pointed out that he couldn’t recall a single kite related accident on the beach in 60 years.

Faced with universal ridicule the council backed down a little – the ban, it sheepishly explained, was mainly aimed at kite buggies and sail kites, although technically a little lad flying a home-made kite could still get his collar felt if the officer concerned felt that way inclined.

Incidentally, just so you know how your taxes are being spent, the ban is to be enforced by council foreshores officers “in conjunction with Humberside Police” – because as we all know there is no actual crime to keep the police busy in the whole of the East Riding.

No sooner had we stopped laughing at that one when up popped Calderdale council to institute a ban on its gardeners wearing shorts because they have to deal with “sharp shrubbery”.

Any gardener wanting to wear shorts on a hot day has to submit a special request to a council manager – at which point, no doubt, half a dozen health and safety officers will conduct a risk assessment in triplicate, before forming a special sub-committee to consider the request, which will then commission a report at great expense from London-based consultants.

That’s the way it works.

Councillor Pauline Nash, who is something called the “cabinet spokeswoman for safer communities”, defended the ban saying: “My view of health and safety is that it is better to be safe than sorry.”

Honestly, where on earth do they find these people?

You know what’s coming next don’t you? Keep an eye on the jobs pages of the Guardian because the betting is we’ll soon be seeing adverts for “shorts safety enforcement officers” and “kite risk engagement facilitators” at 40k a year, six week’s holiday and an index linked pension.

Here in a nutshell you have everything that is wrong with the public sector. These are exactly the same councils that are complaining about the government’s “draconian cuts” that are damaging front-line services.

And indeed, wherever you look, jobs at the sharp end such as lollipop ladies, carers for the elderly and disabled, and school dinner ladies are being ruthlessly pruned back.

But the sort of people who spend their day dreaming up kite bylaws and shorts bans, and the layers of management to support them, are entirely untouched.

It isn’t a matter of money, but of priorities, and the bureaucracy will always act to protect its own.

A few years back I invented a character I called Clipboard Man to lampoon the sort of petty official who delights in slapping a fine on a child for flying a kite.

After the coalition government promised to cut back on bureaucracy and non-jobs in the public sector I thought I’d have to retire him – but no such luck. Judging by events in Yorkshire this month Clipboard Man is alive and kicking.

And it isn’t just councils wasting public money. This week it also emerged that the BBC is employing a “chair champion” at its flagship MediaCity development at Salford Quays.

Officials offer employees a choice of three swivel chairs before training them how to sit down according to health and safety guidelines.

How did our forefathers ever manage to sit down in a chair without some special training from Clipboard Man?

Labour vs the electorate

2011-06-18T11:16:00.001+01:00

Politicians should be wary of asking people what they think, because the answers may be unexpected and unwelcome.

Take for example the Labour party, which, in the wake of last year’s election defeat, embarked on a massive policy review and listening exercise.

This was a sound move because no political party can hope for success if becomes out of touch with the values the electorate holds dear.

The trouble for the new leader, Ed Miliband, was that he pre-empted the results of the consultation somewhat by taking Labour on a sharp leftward trajectory, repudiating the legacy of Tony Blair and declaring New Labour dead.

Miliband and his supporters believe that Labour failed at the last election because it wasn’t left wing enough.

Now the results of the policy review are beginning to emerge and they must make for uncomfortable reading for the party’s leadership.

Because far from demanding more red meat socialism, it turns out voters want precisely the reverse.

According to reports this week, policy co-ordinator Liam Byrne told Labour’s front bench that the results of 20,000 submissions showed that people wanted the party to cut crime and anti-social behaviour, reform welfare and reduce immigration.

The public service they most valued was the police and they were also heavily sceptical of the benefits of the EU.

In other words on virtually every major policy issue, the opinions of ordinary people were in direct opposition to Miliband’s stance.

Labour has got itself into this mess because it is run from a Westminster bubble by the sort of people who believe that there is a “progressive majority” in favour of left wing policies in the UK.

There isn’t; what Labour’s research demonstrates is that Britain is overwhelmingly conservative with a small c.

Blair’s genius was to realise this and to shape his policies to appeal to Middle England – the famed Essex Man and Worcester Woman.

As a result he won three straight election victories with a party that a few years earlier had proved itself unelectable under the lofty socialism of Michael Foot.

David Cameron too has learned this lesson, hence his attempts to “detoxify” the Tories, ranging from his risible stunts with Arctic husky dogs to his squeamishness over NHS reform and determination to prioritise overseas aid.

Both Blair and Cameron are unpopular among their party activists, but both understand that you can’t win elections without both feet planted firmly on the centre ground.

It is not the political partisans you have to convince, but the floating voters.

Miliband’s task – and it is a tough one – is to “detoxify” Labour on the economy in the same way as Cameron has detoxified the Tories on social issues.

Byrne’s jaunty note to his successor at the Treasury “there’s no money left” will hang like a millstone around Labour’s election chances for many years to come.

Miliband would be better off emulating Blair rather than repudiating him.

He has to work with the electorate he has, not the one he wishes he had.

Even economists are moving in the right direction

2011-06-18T11:10:00.002+01:00

In 1981 364 economists wrote a letter to The Times criticising the Conservative government’s policies, saying there was no hope of a recovery unless the administration led by Margaret Thatcher dramatically changed course.

She ignored them, and shortly afterwards the economy spectacularly took off, laying the foundations for an unprecedented period of prosperity that only came to a halt with the Gordon Brown bust of almost 30 years later.

This week 52 economists wrote a similar letter criticising the government’s deficit reduction plan, and demanding a return to the high tax, borrowing and spending policies that almost bankrupted the country.

Let’s hope they end up with egg on their faces too.

But from 364 to 52 – isn’t that a remarkable trend?

If so it would appear to be moving in the right direction, showing that even academics can learn from their mistakes.

Blogs, hoaxes and journalism as verification

2011-06-14T12:39:00.002+01:00

The coverage of the hoax Damascus blogger raises some interesting issues with regard to journalism in the social media age.

It seems the Guardian was alerted to possible problems about the authenticity of the blog when the woman whose Facebook picture was stolen complained to them, and when they did nothing she then went to the PCC.

Following an approach from the PCC, the Guardian replaced that picture with another one of the same woman which they thought was genuine.

The Guardian has since apologised but it does raise the question - if the first picture was fake, did nobody suspect the second one showing the same woman might be fake too?

Would the Tin Eye reverse image search have exposed the doubts much earlier? Did the Guardian try it?

The bloke behind the blog is a 40-year-old activist/PhD student and even after watching his Skype interview with the Guardian it is difficult to understand his motivation.

He appears to have been projecting his liberal political and social views onto a conservative society as some kind of wish fulfilment.

It is all a bit weird, especially the online affair with a Canadian woman.

But the fact is that the mainstream media fell for it, despite the fact that the blog contained little local colour from Damascus that could have helped verify it.

Maybe the problem was that everyone wanted it to be true, so didn't check too hard?

But it shows that with the rise of social media and "user generated content" that verification is becoming a key issue.

Is professional journalism moving from being mainly concerned with the creation of original content, to a model where much of our time will be concerned with the authentication/verification of material provided by others?

And does that require additional/different skills?

Oxfam gets it wrong on global poverty

2011-06-02T17:47:00.006+01:00

OK folks, brace yourselves for the bad news – you’re all gonna die!

In fairness, this is a bit of a truism – as at some point in the future, near or far, every last one of us will shuffle off this mortal coil.

Death, according to Benjamin Franklin, is one of the two nailed on certainties - along with government taxes - in this life of pain.

Not the sunniest thought for a bright Friday morning, but you’ll have to forgive me, as I’ve been reading the doom laden prognostications contained in the latest report from the activist charity Oxfam, Growing a Better Future, published this week.

It predicts a crisis in food production over the next 20 years that will drive much of the world’s population into starvation, with demand rising by 70% and the prices of staple foodstuffs increasing by between 120% and 180%.

It’s tempting to shrug one’s shoulders, and think: “Ho-hum, here we go again.”

After all, in the last few years we have survived dire predictions of global cooling, rapidly followed by equally terrifying prophesies of global warming, with disaster by way of the Millennium Bug, Aids, mad cow disease, the Sars virus, the hole in the ozone layer, bird flu, West Nile virus, Ebola disease and half a dozen other “inevitable” calamities along the way.

Those of us who haven’t shoved our heads in the gas oven stubbornly cling on to life, so: “Yeah, whatever!”

But I actually think Oxfam has a point here – food security will become an increasingly important issue over coming years, especially in countries like the UK where we import most of our essential food supplies.

But Oxfam’s statist, authoritarian solution of increased regulation, more government interference, increased taxes and a naïve reliance on the ability of politicians, is exactly the opposite of anything that has a chance of working.

State interference in the food supply – from Joe Stalin to Robert Mugabe, by way of Kim Jong-Il - invariably results in famine, destitution and oppression.

The only policy that will respond to people’s needs is for politicians to get the hell out of the way and allow the markets to do their magical work.

If, as Oxfam argues, increasing demand will drive up food prices, then – if the state leaves well alone - more entrepreneurial farmers will respond by investing in agriculture and producing food to meet that need.

It is tried and tested, supply and demand capitalism and throughout human history it has been proved time and again as the only reliable way of filling the bellies of the poor.

Certainly, old fashioned Soviet-style central planning - of the kind advocated by Oxfam - is absolutely guaranteed to fail.

For an example look no further than the EU’s Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) – one of the single biggest causes of Third World poverty.

The most significant impact of the CAP is to keep the poor, poor.

It pays taxpayer-funded subsidies to rich, inefficient farmers in the West, while penalising enterprising Third World farmers with swingeing tariffs.

It also dumps subsidised European foodstuffs on Third World markets thereby destroying the livelihoods of millions of farmers.

If the CAP were abolished it would at a stroke provide the biggest boost to the incomes of the poor in modern history, as well as dramatically reducing food bills for working families in Europe.

Yet Oxfam can’t even bring itself to mention it. Instead of less state interference, the charity actually campaigns for more.

Oxfam’s devotion to outdated, top down thinking - in the teeth of all the available evidence – is a terrible betrayal of its mission to the poor.