Evening Standard gets it wrong in Cash for Peerages scandal!

In today's online edition of the Evening Standard (The article is dated the 8th though) there is an article with the head line:

Blair to escape indignity of first PM to be quizzed by police

It is an interesting article rehashing quite a lot of what we already knew. the body of the article indicates that the Police will not hand over the file to the CPS until 2007, and it will take the CPS several months to decide whether to charge or not. They contend (Possibly wrongly) that Blair will go in May. He might, but all he has actually promised is not to be leader by the time of the next party conference. That is all fair enough, but it seems to me that the Police WILL quiz Tony Blair before they hand over the file to the CPS, which then seems to be early 2007, in other words before May.

Would be nice if journalists read what they write. Us bloggers don't get paid they do.

There is of course more news on Guido's blog here.

UPDATE 16.13

I have just checked, and that was in yesterdays paper edition. Today's paper edition would like to correct the idea that TB is consulting lawyers. Apparently he isn't. It would also like to say that Tony may be the first PM since Lloyd George to be quizzed by the police, except that's wrong too. The law was passed after Lloyd George ceased to be PM. Nice to know they are trying hard to be accurate.

Cash for Peerages, another update.

Well, bringing all the stories of today together so far...

Guido has seen Lord Goldsmith, the Attorney General's letter to Dominic Grieve, the Conservative shadow Attorney General and has it published here.

The long and the short of it is that Lord Goldsmith intends to be involved where in the prosecution process where the law requires that his consent is required. He does however say that he will seek independent legal advice from senior council. If he veto's a prosecution he will say why. How nice.

Meanwhile there have been reports that all cabinet members during the 2005 election have been written to by the police asking them to state their position on the cash for peerages scandal. You can read the BBC's report here.

Chanel 4's 7 o'clock news speculated as to why Yates of the Yard would want to ask everyone in the cabinet about the scandal, and indeed 5 have been interviewed including Alan Milburn and Patricia Hewitt. Alan Milburn said he had been interviewed as a witness not a suspect.

Channel 4 news pointed out that Yates of the Yard has been involved in some very high profile cases before, including the Paul Burrell theft case which collapsed in 2002 when the Queen suddenly remembered something just before Paul Burrell was going to take the stand. The speculation is that Yates does not want a repeat of this, so his aim is to make sure that no one recalls having recommended someone for an honour once charges have been laid, as they will have been questioned first. Good thinking Inspector Yates. Cover your bases these are Liars politicians we are talking about.

You can read about the Burrell trial here and hear. You can read the BBC's profile of Deputy Assistant Commissioner John Yates here.

Donald Rumsfeld resigns!

Hooray!

Donald Rumsfeld the incompetent pratt Secretary for Defence of the United States has resigned. Good. You can read the BBC's article here.

Donald is a very clever man. He calculated very well the exact amount of troops and equipment to defeat the Iraqi army of Saddam Husein. Unfortunately he was just to stupid to realise that winning the war was only the minutest part of the task, and that winning the peace is what counts.

He was advised about the recklessness of his proposed course by experienced generals. He did not like what they said so retired them. It is without doubt that the mess in Iraq is largely his fault. However George W Bush's judgement has to be questioned. Rumsfeld should have been sent packing long ago.

I wrote an article on why we are in this mess in Iraq here. Below is a summary from that article of what coalition forces failed to do.

• The coalition forces failed to impose martial law when they captured areas, because they just did not have the men or the will.
• They failed to plan to have a working police force.
• They made 500,000 armed men unemployed.
• They failed to guard the ammunition dumps.
• They failed to guard the borders.
• They failed to understand who the losers would be in the liberation of Iraq.
• They made political blunders of epic proportions.

The blood of many coalition troops, and Iraqi's civilians or otherwise is on Rumsfeld's hands.

Lastly a Conservative government should be competent, fiscally prudent and pragmatic. The current US administration is none of these things. I look forward to a proper conservative government in the US in 2008.

Cash for peerages - A clarification?

On the way home from work I heard that Lord Goldsmith the Attorney General had yet again insisted that he will not stand aside in the decision making process as he thinks his consent is needed for a prosecution under the Honours, Prevention of Abuses Act 1925.

However when I got home I read this on the BBC news website, according to which Lord Goldsmith has written to his shadow Dominic Grieve to say that he need not be involved in those decisions but his consent may be needed as a matter of law in some corruption cases.

Meanwhile Guido appears to have unearthed Lord "Cheerful Charlie" Falconer saying that Lord Goldsmith would stand aside in evidence to a select committee back in April. You can read his article here.

Well, it's so very unlike Lord Goldsmith to change his legal tune when pressed isn't it? He's never done that before.

Cash for peerages - late breaking news

Well, according to the LibDemograph Independent, Lord Goldsmith the Attorney general has now bowed to pressure to stand aside from any decision over prosecuting Tony Blair in the cash for peerages row. You can read the article here.

Bizarrely according to some reports, The Honours, prevention of Abuses Act 1925 does require the Attorney General to approve of ANY prosecution under the act.

This bit of legal information is of course acquired from journalists, who in the public mind are a shade less reliable than an estate agent, but there you go. I can't comment as the act is not online, nor have I had reason to seek legal advice on the issue as I have never been in a position to buy or sell an honour.

What is interesting though is that the report as far as it goes does leave the Attorney General in a position to quash all other potential charges. If the above reports are correct then clearly parliament in 1925 either had no idea of just how low the publics opinion of politicians would sink, or were merely outlawing the opposition selling honours.

Reid wins battle with Brown over Queens speech

According to Martha Kearney on BBC2's Newsnight, Dr John "Comrade" Reid has got the Queens speech focusing on security.

The Queens speech deals with the Governments legislation program for the coming year.

What new laws do we need? Killing people has been against the law since Babylonian times. Conspiracy to Murder since the 1861 Offences against the people act (Also murder is in there too).

Security is a matter of executive action not parliamentary action. There are plenty of laws out there to deal with the threats we face. The only issue there may be is changing the rules of evidence in court so that we can use our own wire tap evidence rather than having to use Belgian stuff.

You therefor have to assume that what is going to be in the Queen's speech is a mindless pointless attack on civil liberties which will further alienate disaffected Muslims, whilst executive inaction keeps us unsafe in our beds at night.

Fantastic! You could not make it up.


In further news, ID cards to save the world before breakfast. Sounds fantastic I know, but it is substantially more plausible than the claims the Government makes for them.

Cash for peerages update.

For those who are not up to speed on the issue, don't read Guido or the Evening standard, here are today's developments.

Firstly The Director of Public Prosecutions (head of the CPS) Ken MacDonald has stepped aside from any consideration of the case because he had a professional relationship with Cheri Blair. Quite right too. Shows the man has integrity. However apparently according to the Evening Standard he is also threatening to resign if a prosecution is blocked. You can read the article here.

Secondly despite the close relationship Lord Goldsmith, the Attorney General has to Tony Blair, he is insisting he will not stand aside from the decision making process leading to much gnashing of teeth. Bizarre. You can read the article in the Evening Standard here.

I would also check Guido out here.

Update 19:50

Firstly I just wanted to say that whilst the reported threat that the DPP Kevin McDonald would resign if the CPS decision to prosecute is over ruled is serious stuff, it could also be the result of badgering and clever question asking by a journalist who may for example have asked "If Lord Goldsmith over ruled the CPS in a decision to prosecute Tony Blair would you resign?" rather than an active statement on his part.

Secondly the most important part of the news above for me is Lord Goldsmiths failure to clearly step aside. No Judge or prosecutor could act where such a conflict of interest arose. If they did then there actions would have to be revisited, but also they would face serious disciplinary action.

Lastly I have heard that there is an incriminating email floating about putting Lord Levy in it up to his neck. If any one has any good links or info I would be grateful.

Here is what has been seen on Comment is Free.

Fisking Ruth Sunderland in the Observer.

I have never been found of the Grauniad or it's sister papers except they do provide some good laughs when quoted in Private eye.

However this article caught my eye as some one on politicalbetting.com linked to it.

Lets work through the air headedness of it.

"The latest crop of insolvency figures is horrific."

How good of you to notice.

"Loan addiction, as any debt counsellor will tell you, is as destructive to individuals and families as alcoholism or gambling, and we have become a nation of binge borrowers."

I'm not going to ask either what this means of what evidence backs this up as I doubt there is any. However people being in debt over there heads is an obvious problem and causes all sorts of problems. People can get used to living beyond there means because their credit rating has just given them lots of cash. So they spend up to their limits and pay the minimum payment or a bit more until the banks either increase their credit limit or they apply for another card.

"One major culprit is lenient insolvency legislation, which came into effect in 2004 and has encouraged people to walk away from their responsibilities."

I see. Would this be the Enterprise Act 2002 which in part amended the Insolvency Act 1986? It seems this rather silly statement assumes that people borrow lots of money in full knowledge of the new insolvency rules. Some how I doubt that very much as they are not that kind for people who like like they have run up massive debts prior to pulling the plug. Besides which most people live in total ignorance of the law. I suspect the problem might be that people can get what ever credit they like on things like credit cards as long as they are prepared to pay silly interest rates which they are not fully informed about.

"This was the brainchild of Gordon Brown, who wanted our system to be modelled on that of the US. The idea was that a more forgiving regime would encourage entrepreneurship."

Seems like a good idea to me. That said I think in the US credit card debt may not be provable in bankruptcy. That said in some states you get to keep the family home no matter how big it is.

"Yet company liquidations have fallen slightly, showing that the legislation has misfired. It is individual consumers who are behind the surge."

And? banks are more careful about lending to companies. Besides which if a company goes bust, it may well be the case that this causes personal insolvency for the owner or directors so we would need more information about where the debt came from to be sure.

"Bankruptcy-lite is not pain-free, as a borrower's credit rating will be flattened. But much of the stigma attached to insolvency has been removed - with predictable results."

Well in that case Gordon has achieved exactly what he set out to achieve. Therefore entrepreneurs will not be bothered about sailing close to the wind and will be more willing to take risks. Good. That said it does cause problems for borrowing more money.

"The only winners are firms such as Debt Free Direct and Accuma, which are cashing in by advising on IVAs."

Really? What about the people who have been the victims of irresponsible lending? Don't they win to some extent as well?

"The banks are seeing a tidal wave of bad debts, which prudent customers will end up funding."

Well, presumably prudent customers will decide not to deal with irresponsible banks. That is the free market after all.

"According to one industry executive, at least 2 million Britons are irretrievably indebted and will only clear their loans if they win the lottery. That is a major social problem."

I see. And just which bunch of shysters lent them this money? Did they not ask how much these people were earning or indeed what other debts they had? No. Why? Because they would rather lend the money, make a killing, and then get airheads to plead poverty for them in the press.

I wrote an article on this subject on the 2nd of October which you can read here. I detailed the steps banks could take to protect themselves. They choose not to. I list them below:

However the banks could also try responsible lending. They could when issuing new credit cards, ask:

* Have you got any other credit cards?
* If so what is the limit and balance?
* Can we see some statements please?
* Have you just been making the minimum payments?

It should of course be noted that Insolvency law comes under the remit of the DTI not the Treasury so i wonder how much this was Gordon's brainchild. Also the issue was and is unsustainable consumer debt rather than what insolvency law is. That clearly is a Treasury issue.

Bonfire safety tip

I was very saddened to hear that last night a man died at a bonfire because something inside it exploded, and launched itself at the man.

You can read the sad story here.

For as long as I can remember I have always followed the following practice.

If I am going to light a fire , I may gather everything together in advance but once I start building the fire I never leave it until it is alight. Not for one minute.

Occasionally I have bonfires on my allotment to get rid of garden waste and the sort of weeds you get in West Sussex (You get dandelions, we get those too, but we also get trees all over the place).

One time a friend has some stuff to burn, so he set up his bit before I got there. When I did get there with my stuff I realised that the fire had been left unattended and took it apart. There was an empty aerosol can in there which would have gone off like a bomb, causing injury.

So never ever leave a fire and then light it. By all means get everything ready, but when it is time to get it going build it from scratch. Please.

Obfuscation and the Politcs of fear

It is interesting to note that both David Blunket and Dr John "Comrade" Reid when Home Secretaries have used the politics of fear to keep their parties rating up, as indeed has Tony Blair. This seems to be there to cover up and obscure the fact that what they are actually very ineffective at what they are doing.

They use the passing of new laws to show how tough they are on things when passing laws makes very little difference to anything unless they are enforced.

This government now seems to be drifting from one fiasco to another. They sold off a prison ship only to now be tendering for a new one. They let foreign prisoners go with out considering them for deportation and then in the back lash tried to deport any one they could find.

I could go on.

When politicians use fear as an electoral weapon I always think of FDR's famous line "The only thing we have to fear is fear itself". How very true.

I was also amazed to hear on Radio 4 that the British Crime survey, favourite of this government does not interview women over 59 so they is little record of sexual assault on them. With the BCS also not covering crime against under 16's there are clearly massive gaps in its crime gathering statistics.

Comrade Reid Fisked by the Register

Just thought I would share this article from the venerable tech and indeed ID related E-Paper The Register.

Look at this article which Fisk's the government totally.

Here is a quote:

"Quality control issues at the Ministry of Truth & Fear? To shore up his speech to the Society of Spook gear Suppliers yesterday Home Secretary John Reid produced some impressive (but strangely implausible) numbers showing the devastating effect the UK security services are having on terrorism. But by bizarre coincidence (?), on Monday Tony McNulty, Home Office Minister for tags, shackles and prison hulks, trotted out numbers covering precisely the same territory.

But, ahem, they're different! Comrade Reid thanked the Plod on our behalf for its efforts: "On behalf of the nation I am delighted to pay tribute to our police, judicial, security and armed services for their great work and unstinting sacrifices. For example, from 9 September 2001 to 30 September 2006 there have been 387 people charged under the Terrorism Act and other criminal legislation..."

Go read the article. It is worth it.

Conservatives inconsistent on terror?

Yesterday on politicalbetting.com Nick Palmer MP posted this:

"personally I don't think Iraq will be a major factor in the next GE either way. Whether it is ultimately seen as a success or not, it will be seen as less relevant to the 2009-2014 period. But of course terrorism will probably still be a live issue, and a record of inconsistency on that may be a handicap."

You can read the comment in context here.

It seems the argument is that if a party opposes the Government on any proposed measure then it is either weak or inconsistent on terror. I would assume that the argument also applies to Liberal Democrats as well. The position does not hold up to logical scrutiny (or words to that effect).

Firstly it assumes that what ever is being proposed by the government is going to achieve the results that government thinks it will. Secondly it assumes that the government has a monopoly of good ideas.

Neither is the case for any government on any issue, and very much so in this case. That's why we have debates to discuss the best way forward.

The Conservatives and Liberal Democrats have opposed Labour on some Terrorism legislation because neither thinks that certain proposals will reduce terror. The Rev. Iain Paisley seems to agree as well, and I understand that the good Dr NO! is no softy. What these parties are interested in is the safety and security as well as the liberty of the British people.

The charge of inconsistency is of course a school boy taunt. I would not be impressed with it in a school yard and I can't say I am impressed with it in a debate as important as terrorism. It seems there to score cheap political points or rather more worryingly close down debate on a subject where debate is very important.

Terrorism will not be beaten by masses of repressive measures, in fact they may make the matter worse. It will be beaten by understanding the ground rules, dealing with the propaganda and investing in the intelligence services to look for and track these people. What the law is or is not makes little difference as frequently terrorists are already conspiring to commit an offence which in it self an offence. The trick is finding them, and again that is down to people being out there gathering intelligence.

I have written articles on the war on terror itself here and here.

Tom Watson's blog is down again!

When I last mentioned his blog here, it was down. Since then it came up and is now down again, which is a bit of a shame as I posted some comments there about flag burning and things on it and now I can't see if they have been passed or not.

Perhaps Tom needs to move his blog. Tom Watson's blog is here. He is famous for not doing Gordon Browns bidding by sticking a knife unsuccessfully into Tony Blair, as well as having an odious friend in Sion Simon who I discussed here.

India 6th largest investor in renewable energy ahead of UK!

This was a surprising fact to come out of watching Newsnight tonight with Jeremy Paxman going over the Stern report (which I will comment on when I have had a chance to read it)

I can't remember what the Indian representative s name was, but it seems to me to be a startling fact that we are investing so little that we come BELOW 6th, and that India which has many more problems to deal with is ahead of us.

That goes to show just how ineffective this government has been. It talks lots on the environment but does not seem any thing like as committed to it as the previous Conservative government.

I regret to say that Newsnight wheeled out Nigel Lawson who seems to be an ardent climate change denier. No mention of the fact that much of the ground work for global climate change treaties was under a Conservative government and that Mrs Thatcher was a early evangelist dealing with climate change on the global stage.

Tax credits fiasco The scary letter!

I got this letter from the tax credit office.

What can it mean?

I have seen two different entitlement letters in a single day saying that I owe them money on the one hand and they owe me money on the other. Easy to figure that one out. Just wait to see what turns up in the bank account. This letter I can't fathom out.

If you have any idea please post in the comments section.

If you want to find out what the other side looks like, find a blank sheet of A4 and turn it over.

Priceless.

To be fair to the hard working people at Preston they are all pleasant and I have not spoken to one who thinks Gordon Brown can find his arse with both hands, even with the benefit of a map.

Never was so much owed to so many by so few

I wrote an article on the promises made to our troops in Afghanistan here.

Some one on politicalbetting.com linked to this graphic I thought I would share.

Hat tip to an artist with imagination, Beau Bo D'Or whose blog is here.

I have moved my blogs to beta

Because earlier today I almost lost the will to live whilst trying to post this. I sat there for hours trying to get it published only for blogger.com to report that it could not complete due to a java error.

Any way it is done now, and the template editor looks good. Just one little niggle to sort out and I will be there.

Update 23:45.

I have to say the new spell checker is fantastic, fast easy clear and generally all round fantastic.

Publishing speed is bullet fast as well.

Carbon Dioxide emissions and the environment

Just wanted to clear something up just so there are no misconceptions in the green debate.

According to the Fascist Mail on Sunday David "Look at my lovely face" Milliband is proposing to tax on green issues until the pips squeak. This will hurt the poor more than the rich, the rural poor doubly so. You can read their article here. Us conservatives need to come up with better answers.

However when we talk of Carbon emissions we should be clear on what it is we mean.

If you did up some coal, or drill for some oil, and burn it you are releasing fossilised carbon. That results in higher concentrations of CO2 in the environment, and as I said in this article, it absorbs heat more than air does so the atmosphere gets hotter.

However, that does not mean that carbon based fuels are in any way bad, if they come from plants that have removed carbon from the atmosphere first.

Also from an environmental point of view it is nuts to scrap all the cars we have in favour of new ones, if we can find non fossil based fuels to run them on. Well they do exist. Cars can be adjusted, but more interestingly you can mix bio fuels with fossil fuels to get net carbon emissions down NOW. The only problem is, you may have to reduce tax on something.

Hat tip to Dizzy who also has a good article on the subject here.

Cash for peerages - has the Times beaten Guido to it?

Guido Fawkes, past master at breaking political news and covering the cash for peerages scandal appears to have been beaten to it by the Times on Sunday in this article.

Mind you they could just be recycling old net news, (Which is good, Conservatives are in favour of recycling) but they do appear to have a recent source saying Lord Cashpoint is passing the blame up the line.

What I can't stand about all this is the insinuation by blind Labour party loyalists that us Conservatives have been doing it for years. Well if so how come the 1925 Honours act was brought in to deal with Liberals abuse, and no Conservative government has ever looked like being prosecuted over anything like this.

Whiter than white is what the promised us in 1997, Sleazier than sleazy is what we have got.

Banning Flag burning?

According to the BBC, gibbering idiots who can't do their job Police Chiefs want to ban flag burning. You can read the BBC's article here.

The aim is to crack down on Islamic extremists and preachers of hate apparently.

Have these useless pratts not noticed that they can already charge them with things like incitement to murder but frequently don't. Why ask for new laws if you are singularly failing to enforce the ones we have got?

Other proposed assaults on our freedoms include banning people covering their faces on demonstrations.

We need to just say NO!

As well as telling them to prosecute people who are already breaking the law.

Yahoo are Spineless scum!

I understand that Yahoo dobbed in a Chinese emailer to the Chinese police detailing who what why and when an email was sent.

The spineless barstards, collaborators in suppressing free speech suggested that when a law enforcement agency asked for information they did not question why.

I was only following orders guv. Got 6 million Jews, and other assorted people killed did that sort of attitude.

I have been asked to provide information in connection with the 1992 Administration of Social security act, not that the pratt who was asking knew what it was. I said I was more than happy, in fact overjoyed to cooperate provided they provided details of the specific laws under which I should supply such information and the specific dates with which they were concerned. I also required the same in writing. As the matter was allegedly urgent, I suggested that they could fax it over first, so we could do the work, and stick it in the post at the same time, so that we would effectively act on the basis of the hard copy.

Needless to say neither turned up. However I was never prepared to provide information unless it was LAWFULLY required where I was.

Yahoo. Spineless appeasers of a totalitarian state. Microsoft are no better but at least Google whilst on the face of it being the same are shipping tools to get around this heinous shit.

Update 02:30:

I forgot to hat tip the BBC news 24, had their website had an article to link to I would have done so.

Also, the point of my story was to point out that you do not need to mindlessly cooperate with anyone who says you have to.

Update 12:00
Amnesty internationals UK website is here, and its campaign against internet repression is here.

The NHS's best year ever!

If you didn't laugh you would cry.

This rubbish was peddled by the Labour Governments other minister for Incompetence (and health) Patricia "I have not got a clue" Hewitt. You can read the BBC's article here, an unsurprising rebuff from David Cameron, leader of the Conservative party here, and the nurses not being entirely in agreement with Hewitt here.

There is a story in this weeks Mid Sussex Times, about an 8 year old boy Joe, from the same town as I, and his experience when he broke his arm.

In summary, it took 20 hours to treat him, he faced 3 trips in an ambulance, being kept waiting in the middle of the night for a bed, so he had to wait in a wheel chair, and also being kept next to a man talking about committing suicide and how he had been raped. A and E in Brighton is in chaos.

These sorts of incidence are not isolated. We get to hear of people rushing into maternity to give birth only to find there are not enough beds available as well as other similar incidents on a regular basis.

The reason for this is that the Princess Royal Hospital at Haywards Heath, a fairly new purpose built facility serving the constituencies of Mid Sussex, Arundel and South Downs, and Lewis, is suffering the death of a thousand cuts having already suffered ward closures as well as losing its A and E.

You can read the article in the Mid Sussex Times here.

Mayor of Cuckfield wins in cash for votes election!

Yes, The 41st Mayor of the Independent State of Cuckfield, Henry O'Donohue, has been elected to office, only on the basis of the amount of bribes he collected.

However, in order to count all bribes must be declared and given to charity. Can any other politicians claim to do this? I don't think so!

See here. Or here.

Bush 'dissatisfied' with Iraq war

No really he is. He also says "success in Iraq is vital"

You can read this from the BBC here.

I bet he is not quite as dissatisfied as all the people who have died because Donald Rumsfeld is an arrogant pratt, but that is just my opinion.

I have written on why Iraq is a mess, and it is all about the mistakes made already. Those were made by Ronald Dumsfeld and George Pratt Bush.

It's nice to know that George now sees its not all rosy in Iraq.

Wow Spooks was good tonight.

However expect howls of protests from those who claim that Mossad would never do such a thing.

Be assured they would.

The Spooks website is over here if you are interested.

I like play writes/screen play writers when they make points that make you think as well as entertain. Its also one of the reasons why I like Dr. Who.

BNP and the CRE agree that Labour is pushing Muslims too far!

You just could not make this up.

Trevor Phillips, Head of the Commission for Racial Equality, The BNP, and incidentally many Conservatives think that the current focus on Muslims and in particular the veil are in danger of causing riots.

You can read Trevor's article in the Sunday Times here. The BNP's comment is here, from which I quote:

"It's a dangerous game the Labour establishment has chosen to play, one which could lead to serious disorder and bloodshed. Do Blair and Straw really want to see a civil war on the streets of West Yorkshire, Birmingham and Oldham?"

They also quote Richard Oborne in the Daily Mail (hardly the Guardian is it?) saying this:

"There is a whiff of the lynch mob about the wave of attacks over the past fortnight, and it is no surprise to learn that the new national mood sparked by Jack Straw and sanctioned by Tony Blair has indeed led to a number of assaults on British mosques, including one firebombing."

Does this mean that the BNP have become a responsible and respectable party? No, if you read the article in full and the rest of their website you will think not. It does go to show however just how damn irresponsible and dangerous Labour are becoming.

Talking tactics on Iraq

Apparently George Walker Bush, The Pratt of the United States of America is discussing tactics in Iraq with his generals, and his defence secretary and legendary pratt Donald Rumsfeld. You can read the BBC's article here.

The date? The 21st of October 2006.

Should this not have been done in 2002 and 2003? I wrote about the mess in Iraq here, many people (including me) doubted the troop numbers and tactical planning ahead of the invasion as well. Meanwhile people are dying in large numbers, and we are not resourcing Afghanistan properly either.

The Prison over crowding fiasco II

In my last post on this subject here, I pointed out how this bunch had just sold off a prison ship, in August. I now see they are tendering to get another one. You just could not make this up. You can see the article from the BBC here.

I also note that they are allowing a sex offender to use gym facilities in schools on the grounds of human rights of the offender. That is of course complete tosh.

Its official, I am a Mid Rank Nerd!

Many thanks to Ian Dale for pointing the site out!

(He only scored 23!)

We need tougher immigration laws! Apparently

I have just heard John Reid talking rubbish on Channel 4 news tonight. He seemed to be saying that the problems with immigration and asylum is that the law is not tough enough.

What?

Does this pratt not know that the law is regularly not enforced (unless there is a headline in it so the government can look tough) as it is, so we don't need new laws, we just need the current ones enforced. I wrote an article on how the police regularly let illegal immigrants go because the IND can't or wont deal with them here.

What worries me most is that through incompetence this bunch keep passing ever more draconian laws which are not enforced unless its news worthy to do so. What happens when some one uses these laws to their full extent.

Of course the reason for passing laws that are "tough" is to look good in the media. It also makes reasonable politicians look bad when they point out how bad some of these laws are. It also keeps parliament busy. After all if they were not passing useless laws they may be scrutinising the executive in a more rigorous way.

Control orders are not enough!

Oh no! Allegedly.

A few days ago the BBC interviewed a brother of a man who is on a control order, only to find out that he was on the run. They then rang up the Office for Incompetence to confirm one of the 15 on control orders was on the run to find out that it was not one, but two, the other one having been on the un for months. Brilliant!

You can read the BBC article here.

We apparently have control orders because these people are dangerous. We hold them on secret squirrel evidence that they are not allowed to see, nor are they allowed to know what they are accused of. To give you some confidence of how safe this system is you can read this article here about how a Special Advocate noticed the same evidence had been used in two different cases in contradictory ways.

We have control orders to keep these allegedly dangerous people under control because we can't bring them to trial, oh no! If we did we would have to present this secret squirrel evidence in court (where I suspect some of it would be laughed at) and that just would not do. We could not possibly present wire tap evidence in a British court, that just would not do.

The fact that a Turkish people trafficker was convicted with the aid of such evidence, you can read the BBC's article on it here, should not confuse people because it was gathered by foreign security forces. Is this just not bizarre? We can allow Belgian wire tap evidence in our courts but not our own?

Lets be clear on this. Six of the people on control orders are British born. It could be you. We can't let this affront to British justice continue. If there is evidence that some one is a terrorist it must be presented before a proper court. Otherwise we are on the slow trail to a police state.

Sion Simon, The pratt for Birmingham Erdington

We have all come across some cringe making, stomach turning pratts in our time (Please feel free to replace the word pratt with anything you may feel is more appropriate) but Sion seems to me to take to biscuit.

This utter pratt, disgrace as an MP, and perhaps as a human being first came to note as one of the signatures of that "you should resign now Tony" letter.

He then had this put up on you tube. It is a very unpleasant and unfunny attempted parody of webcameron.

He made matters much worse by attempting to answer his critics in the most juvenile, unpleasant, stupid and disgraceful ways on sky here.

He seemed to have thought that he was making a serious political point, in a satirical way. Not so, there was no satire there, it was as sick as the joke about the difference between babies and marbles. Not funny at all.

His political point seemed to be that his mate Tom Watson (co signatory of above mention letter) was a "real blogger, and video blogger" (please note Tom's blog appears to be down) and David Cameron was only exploiting the medium with out caring about it.

That just smacks of the most utter sour grapes. David Cameron is not allowed to blog because Tom Watson did it first? These people are gibbering fools. I have been blogging since June, so what? David Cameron's blog is popular because of who he is, leader of the opposition. People are interested in what he thinks and says, and may well prefer to here it from David himself rather than just though the media. People are also interested in Tom Watson's blog, but not as much as he is now just a fat labour back bencher.

On the other hand, Tom Watson did do a video blog piece here, which parodied David Cameron's cleaning up politics video recently in which he made some interesting points.

He talked about party funding, and the need to clean it up. He raised the issue of the Midlands Industrial Council. Well, the donations it makes are legal, and further more it is an arms length organisation and the Conservative party have no right to know its members or reveal them. As for the "dodgy" loans, well they were before Cameron's time, so he is not in a position to reveal them.

Tom then goes on to mention a number of measure to clean up party funding all of which can be found in a previous post on my blog from the 14th of July 2006. Needless to say as he seems to be parroting my views I could hardly disagree, though a hat tip would have been nice.

Hat tips to Iain Dale and Guido Fawks for all the links. I first saw a link to that horrific you tube piece by Sion "I am a complete Pratt" Simon on politicalbetting.com.

Global warming - Is it really happening?

Stop laughing at the back!

The problem with discussing global warming is that it almost immediately becomes theological.

In fact I can already see some in the environmental lobby preparing to burn me at the stake. Obviously they will only use wood from sustainable forests which encourage bio diversity that has not been transported too far.

A few days ago I came across this by Luboš Motl and this by Iain Dale.

There is clearly a lot more we do not know about global warming than we do.

The first article by Luboš Motl goes on about how global warming does not seem to be happening in the Southern hemisphere, while Ian Dale queried David Miliband's numbers on CO2 levels. These two things could be easily explained. The differing data on the Southern hemisphere may be because CO2 levels there are lower, and the differing CO2 numbers can also be explained because CO2 levels vary by time of year and region.

We hear so many things on the subject from "Were all doomed!" so we might as well not bother to "it's a myth" and all of it in either theological or ideological terms. That is not way to deal with a serious scientific matter.

Still lets try and look at it sensibly:

• Is the world warming up?
• If it is, is it man made or is the sun burning hotter?
• Is there anything we can do?
• Could global warming be a good thing?
  

Is the world warming up?

Well it looks like it is. We have had a series of hot summers, and it seems some glaciers are melting. However the planet is not as hot as it has been in the past.

Is it man made, or could the sun be getting hotter?

Possibly, or rather probably. Scientists think it is man made because they have been looking at CO2 emissions and concentrations of CO2 in the atmosphere. CO2 absorbs more heat from sunlight than either oxygen or nitrogen does, so the more of it there is about the more heat the atmosphere absorbs from sunlight. You can try an experiment at home. Get two similar clear plastic bottles and have one with only air in it, and fill the other with CO2, then put a thermometer in both and put them in the sun. The one with mostly CO2 will get a lot warmer a lot quicker.

CO2 levels also vary by season, and place as levels of consumption and production vary by economic activity and plant growth.

Could the sun be getting hotter?

Well, it could be. I don't think we know enough about the cycles of the sun to be able to be anything like conclusive. The question is surely so what?

The planet would be ice bound with out any CO2, so it follows that our behaviour can positively affect the state of our planet. If we take the right actions not only could we stop the rise in green house gasses but we could also reverse them, making up for the increase in temperature of the sun, if it is in fact happening.

Could global warming be a good thing?

In Roman times it is said they used to grow grapes as far north as Northumberland. So some places may look set to benefit, however at the same time Libya used to be the bread basket of the Roman empire and global warming won't bring that back.

It is clear that the world has both warmed and cooled over time, but generally this has happened fairly slowly. What we have here seems to me to be far too rapid. Mankind will definitely survive, but much could be lost, including a lot of people. Also the hunt to secure resources could end up in many expensive wars.

Lastly, the thing about global warming is that there will always be evidence pointing one way or another, and theories to explain how it is or is not happening. If we wanted to be rigorous we would arrange some sort of control experiment. Unfortunately we only have the one planet on which to do it. We therefor have to look at the balance of probabilities. We are only going to get one chance to get it right. More importantly fossil fuels are a finite resource, so we may as well develop the technologies to live without cheap fossil fuels now.

I will write an article on green taxes another day.

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The Prison over crowding fiasco

It seems to have come as a bit of a surprise to the government that they are about to run out of prison places, so all sorts of things are being proposed.

The fact is the writing has been on the wall for years, and nothing has been done. No emergency places brought on line, in fact the prison ship in Weymouth has been shut down.

This is rank incompetence.

What is worse however is that no one in government has looked at dealing with the problem from the other direction which is to reduce offending rates, of which the easiest to deal with is re offending rates. After all you get to talk to a captive audience.

At the last general election the Conservatives proposed a massive increase in drug rehabilitation but inside and outside of prison. This would cost extra money, but could well have removed the need to build more prisons and house more prisoners, saving both government and the economy lots of money.

This government is just a useless clueless bunch of opportunists and idiots.

The scandal of illegal immigration

The scandal of illegal immigration is not so much what the law is, which is much tougher than it was in 1997, but the acuality.

For example, if a policeman arrests someone (now all offences are arrestable, formerly only those attracting a prison sentence of 2 years or more were), and has reason to believe they are an illegal immigrant there is nothing they can do.

They used to informally check identity against the National Insurance database, now wrongly denied them under the data protection act, (though government now wants to be as profligate with our data as it feels like) from which they could establish a fair case that some one was or was not an illegal immigrant but they can't hold them for more than 24 hours. They may also be in possession of obviously forged identity papers such as an Italian or Spanish driving license.

However this is all irrelevant because unless they can get an expert (currently a 6 month waiting list at the IND) or the aledged country of origins embassy to say it is a forgery there is insufficient evidence.

However even if they have an illegal immigrant, bang to rights, the IND just are not able to take the case on, and the Police have to release them within 24 hours, even if they have absconded from bail before.

And yet the law is so much tougher now, however it is only used now to get good newspaper headlines, and as such is applied in an arbitrary, and fundamentally un British way.

No matter what your view of immigration is, you can't allow illegal immigration. Even if you are in favor of an open door policy, you would not want people here on false papers who may be escaping justice in another liberal democracy.

We have been asked to swallow the most heinous assaults on our constitutional rights because this government would rather look tough by passing more illiberal legislation to solve problems, that they could have solved with the legislation they inherited. The problem can only be dealt with by executive action, not parliamentary action. If ministers can't get a grip with the laws we have they need to resign.

We are being led by idiots. I have said it before, and I have no doubt I will have to say it again.

The promise in Afghanistan

It is interesting to note that Tony Blair felt it politically necessary to go public with a pledge to provide anything our boys needed in Afghanistan. I suspect the idea was to look good in the media.

What is fascinating is that the response "We could do with more helicopters" came back over the megaphone that is the mass media. You have to wonder if the commander concerned thought St Tony may have been spinning so thought he would pin the fella (or words to that effect) down.

Do our commanders in the field have so little confidence in our political leadership?

Which leads me on to another point. I wrote an article on why we were in the mess in Iraq which is here.

So why are we in this mess in Afghanistan? Because we were far too keen to get in to the mess in Iraq without having the resource to complete the task we had already taken on, or indeed Iraq.

Incedently we could also do with more infantry, armoured fighting vehicles and just about more of everything in Afghanistan.

Folks, I am afraid we are being led by gibbering idiots.

Big banks whinge about IVA's

From last Sundays Telegraph, (1st of October 2006).

Apparently the big banks have warned the government that they may stop lending to poorer families in the face of a boom in personal insolvencies, presumably both bankruptcies and Individual Voluntary Arrangements (IVAs).

IVA's are up 153% in the second quarter of this year.

I can see why they might be upset. They seem to blame insolvency practitioners operating in debt counselling firms, possibly aggressively looking for business, and their fairly confusing regulatory arrangements. There are 6 separate bodies to which an insolvency practitioner can belong to, and I agree that needs looking at. Possibly there is a need for there to be regulations about cold calling debtors.

However the banks could also try responsible lending. They could when issuing new credit cards, ask:

• Have you got any other credit cards?
• If so what is the limit and balance?
• Can we see some statements please?
• Have you just been making the minimum payments?
  

This would ensure that they do not issue to cards to people who then would end up with structural debt at fairly high interest rates, who already have the same problem on other cards.

They could also try not constantly upping credit limits on credit cards when it should be obvious that the person is not paying off the current debt.

Of course banks won't do this as I suspect they would rather reap the high profits inherent in this sort of lending. This is why the law should stay broadly as it is. If the banks are negligent with their money they surely deserve to lose it.

Will we cut taxes?

Just thought I would clear up some confusion, as some people are being deliberately confused.

We will not promise to cut taxes yet, because we do not yet know what the public finances are. Government borrowing is a bit of a concern at the moment, as it seems to be growing whilst the economy is also. We may have to start paying it back.

What we have said is that "We will share the proceeds of growth", and "We put economic stability before tax cuts".

What that means is that if the economy grows by 2.5% we won't just sit back and rake in all the tax, we will reduce the tax a bit and increase public spending a bit, which means that over a parliament both public spending and tax will drop as a percentage of GDP.

I appreciate John Redwood may appear to some to have a different position but he would not put tax cuts ahead of economic stability either. He argues that if taxes are lowered then you get higher growth, more self dependence and ultimately more money for public services. He is right.

The only debate is not so much when to reduce the tax burden, but when to start naming the taxes we will cut. The sensible answer has to be in a manifesto.

The purity of the English Language

I just read this on politicalbetting .com, and it made me laugh. Many thanks to Andy Cooke.

As for its dominance, I ascribe it to its sheer cheek in nicking the best bits of other languages (cf the quote by James Nicoll chiding someone for attempting to defend the purity of the English language:

“The problem with defending the purity of the English language is that English is about as pure as a cribhouse whore. We don’t just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary.”)

Or you can read in in context with this link.

That Brown record in full.

Well, not quite in full, but here are some highlights from The Telegraph on Sunday from the 24th of September 2006.

• Council tax revenue has gone up 7% per year since 1997, that is 83% to £21 billion.
  
• Quango spending up 50% in two years to £123.8 billion. That is £40 billion, which is more than we spend on defence.
• Taxes have gone up £19 billion this year, that is £750 per household.
• Calls to the Consumer Credit Counselling Service are up from 8,000 per year in 1997 to 200,000 a year.
• Productivity growth is down from 2.3% in 1997 to 1.6% now.
• Fiscal drag means that there are now 4 million high rate tax payers, up from 2.1 million in 1997.
• Stamp duty revenue is up from £1.2 billion in 1997 to 4.9 billion now.
• Inheritance tax has gone from £1.7 billion to £3.3 billion.
• Public spending has risen from 37.4% of GDP to 44.9%
• Government forecasted a growth in public borrowing between 2001 and 2006 of £28 billion, it has in fact borrowed £129 billion.
• The forecast for the next 6 years is £175 billion, or £7000 per household.
• August 2006 borrowing was £7.6 billion, 40% above forcast and the highest since 1993.
• Personal debt has doubled to £1,120 billion (Yes that is a trillion).
• Unemployment is up to 5.5% from 4.7% last year.
• The savings ratio has halved to 5% since 1997.

And whilst all that has been going on, there have been 15 new regulations every day since 1997 costing business an estimated £40 billion.

It is going to be hard work sorting out this mess.

A week in Weymouth

I am just back from a weeks holiday in Weymouth, (in South Dorset, currently held by Labours Jim Knight). Actualy I am not. I was in August, got home wrote this article and then forgot to spell check it and publish it. Second Doh! of today.

Well, if you like the sea, and somewhere with lots for kids to do, I'd recommend it. My children and I certainly enjoyed it.

If you want to move about in Weymouth I recommend using your feet. During the summer season it seems generally quicker, and if you are staying centrally you can get to lots of places quite easily. Oddly Weymouth does not seem to have any hardware shops.

We visited the beach several times, Mr Whipy ice creams are cheap. We also went to Monkey World, (Where you try to see if there is a difference between your kids and the exhibits), Bovington tank museum, Charmouth, the Sea life centre and Nothe fort.

Weymouth will also benefit from the Olympics in 2012 as they are hosting the sailing, which should be good. However that means house prices are climbing out of the reach of the locals which seems a bit of a shame.

Weymouth's economy suffers badly from Dorset's roads as well. Speaking to some locals the only industry of any note is tourism which is seasonal. New Look used to have its main distribution centre there but that has closed down.

It is not hard to see why. The roads are appalling. Mostly single lane A and B roads, no motorways and lots of congestion. You can also tell when you have left Dorset and entered Hampshire because the roads are so much better, being either dual carriageway A roads or motor ways. What Dorset needs is a decent east west motor way/dual carriageway, linking to the M27 with dual carriageway links to the major coastal towns and a motorway to London.

The Legislative and Regulatory Reform Bill

You will notice that I now carry a link to www.saveparliament.org.uk on the left hand side of the page, as well as a link to the no2id campaign.

What is all this rubbish about saving parliament? Well it is a campaign to stop The Legislative and Regulatory Reform Bill from becomming The Legislative and Regulatory Reform Act.

What the bill is for

Well according to some estimates extra regulation since 1997 is costing business some £40 billion a year according to some sources. If a regulation turns out to be a wrong un, surely we want rid of it?

What the bill allows

What the bill allows is for any act to be amended, replealed or replaced by a minister and in some cases by an official, except where it affects tax rates. It does allow for the creation of new criminal offences, but these are limited to ones with a sentence of less than 2 years (In a Crown court, less if the offence is to be tried in a magistrates court).

The original draft allowed for the act to be used to redraft it self, though that has now been restricted.


However, to give you an idea, a minister could make carrying ID cards compulsory by the back door, as a criminal offence with a sentence of 2 years.

As far as I can tell, it would also allow for the extension of a Parliament beyond 5 years. Truely scary stuff, particularly if you watched Spooks the other night.

There are in fact so many ways that ministers can change the law in dangerous ways with this bill, if it becomes law that I urge you to visit the saveparliament website and write to your MP. The blogosphere can if it wants to defeat this bill if we all act.

Why do we have this problem?

Well, because of the relentless pace of legislation in the last 9 years creating many acts that have given more power than they should have, and indeed given power which has been used in ways that Parliament never intended.

To give you an idea of how many laws have been passed, between 1945 and 1997 we had 3 Criminal justice acts passed. since we have had about 40, or a bit over 4 a year, creating about 3000 new criminal offences, or 333 new offences a year or about 2 offences for everyday Parliament has sat.

So if they realy did want to reduce the burden of legislation, stop passing so many laws and try reforming a few.

Has any one else done this sort of thing before?

Yes, there is a similar bill listed on wikipedia here called the enabling act.

You might be a Labour party supporter and might think I am being swivell eyed about this, because a Labour government would never do any thing bad. In short you may trust this Government. Will you trust the next one though?

Muslims are being killed every day!

According to a clip from a "martyrdom video" shown on Channel 4 tonight.

There are about 1.4 billion Muslims world wide, so it seems to that it would be statistically unlikely that anything else would be the case. After all people are dying all the time from car accidents, falling of ladders and all sorts of other things, including being murdered by criminals.

I doubt that was what they were talking about though.

So what were they talking about? Iraq and Afghanistan? Surely not. The majority of the deaths of Muslims there are at the hands of people who allege they are Muslims.

John Snow did a very interesting interview with a former member of Hizb ut-Tahrir. John Reid gave a speech warning Muslim parents of the danger of brainwashing. The former member of Hizb ut-Tahrir did not like the term because it seems to remove responsibility for the actions of the "brain washed" from them. He thought that was wrong, because we are all responsible for what we do. I have to say he made a lot of sense. We could do with the media interviewing more people like him.

I noted the heckling at John Reids speech. The silent protest was OK, but the heckler reminded me of the sort of bully boy tactics used by the hard left of the Union movement and of course the fascists.

Worrying news

I regularly read politicalbetting.com, and from there got two links to interesting stories in the dead tree press.

One is on pensions and how they have changed in 10 years, in the Telegraph here, and one in the Daily Mail on the fail in crime detection rates here.

Pensions

10 years ago we had the strongest pensions in Europe, now they are in collapse. The report looks at the value of a pension paid in at £500 per year over 25 years maturing in 1996 and in 2006. The pension would have been worth £120,239 in 1996 and would be worth £55,992 now. As an annuity that would give an income of £13,466 in 1996 and £3,975 per year now.

Some people blame Gordon Brown for his £5 billion a year pension raid, others blame the fall in the stock market and some both. Who or what is to blame is irrelevant, the issue is that nothing has been done about it. A climate has been created in which people don't feel it makes sense to save for a pension.

Crime

The figures here are worrying. Far less people are being caught for things like robbery than used to be the case. The same is also true for rape and other violent offences. Murder detection rates are high though which is good.

The one thing most likely to deter crime is not what punishment people get if caught, it is the chances of getting caught which counts.

So why do we have this mess? Well, partly it is red tape, but it is also in my view a result of the vast number of new laws passed in the last 9 years.

This government seems happy to throw around resource (in terms of money) at things without getting the results.

A new Conservative government will need to use imagination to fix the structural problems being built in to our society.

Tax, the principled argument.

Well, why tax people? Anyone look forward to seeing just how much tax we have paid? Thought it was too low and demanded to pay more?

As far as I can see there are three things people think tax can achieve.

1. Raise money government spending.
2. Alter behavior.
3. Redistribution of wealth.

Raise money government spending

Well, hopefully this is not controversial. Government needs money. Want to defend the realm? Pay tax. Want universal education? Pay tax. Want unemployment benefit? Pay tax.

What ever you think government should, or should not be doing it should be doing something, which does need paying for, which means we have to levy taxes to get the money.

Alter behavior

Well, you can change behavior a bit by taxing things. For example as the tax on cigarettes has risen so more people have given up. (Well not me but quitters!) You can also encourage behavior by giving tax breaks for things like research and development. Currently green taxes are proposed to make us greener.

This approach works a bit, but has limitations. Fuel is smuggled in Northern Ireland and indeed agricultural fuel is cleaned to remove the red. As taxes on cigarettes rise so does smuggling.

Redistribution of wealth

Here I have to ask questions. Redistributing what from whom and to whom? More importantly, does it work?

As they say on ABC, lets take a closer look.

Firstly one of the founding principles of communism is "from each according to their ability to each according to their need". I have to say that is a fantastic ideal, and in small communities it can and does work. Unfortunately it seems that it does not scale well.

I presume that the intent is to redistribute from the wealthy to the poor. This does raise the first question, which is, who is rich and who is poor? Sounds daft but I thought I'd ask. Do we mean the city banker who has just earned £1,000,000 or do we mean the old person who's houses value has just doubled because house building is at an all time low?

The first is easy to hit because you can just up his PAYE, oh no you can't. Our tax system is so complicated that Philip Green gave his wife £1.3 billion with remarkably little tax. (I wonder if he donates money to the Labour party, and if he does, is he cheaky enough to want a peerage too?)

Well at least the old folks are easy to hit, it is after all hard to hide a house.

The next issue is to whom are you going to redistribute this wealth, why, and what will it achieve?

Hopefully, (although some might be forgiven for thinking it doesn't works like that) the wealth is being redistributed to the poor.

What are we doing? If taxes can both encourage and discourage behavior, this seems to me to be paying people to be poor, and if you encourag behavior people will follow. Paying people to be poor ensures that you have poor people. So we give people on low wages benefits (As opposed to removing them from the tax system) to do jobs that do not pay a living wage. Surely that is subsidising people who want to employ people at unrealistic wages? I know some New Labour fans want to keep service sector inflation low, but why should the tax payer subsidise cleaners for those who want them, whilst keeping the jackboot of poverty over people? (The worst offender is bizarrely the public sector especially in cleaning).

So do we take money from his nibs who pays his butler a handsome sum to subsidise someone who does not want to pay for a cleaner but will if they don't have to pay the going rate?

I hear the social justice argument, but I can't see the point of paying people to be poor. If some one really wants a cleaner, they can pay for it. The only true way of lifting people out of poverty is by giving them opportunities through education and raising their expectations. All else is an illusion.

All that said, the tax burden does need to be reduced on the poor, and we do need welfare state.

The Popes controversial speech

Well, if you want to know what all the fuss was about you can read the speech here, which if nothing else may help you get to sleep.

Firstly we should all note that there are those on all sides who will jump on anything to cause controversy and raise riots. We need to appreciate that there are those who will willfully misconstrue anything that is said to gain influence or start a riot.

Secondly , and perhaps bizarrely, I do not recommend burning down Churches or murdering nuns as a sound way of showing how peaceful ones religion is. Moderate Muslims need to get their voices heard on this one.

Update, forgot to put the link in. Doh!

Spooks

I have just finished watching Spooks on BBC one. Very good drama, or at least I enjoyed it.

Just one thought. This country is about far more than warm beer and cricket. It is about freedom and the rule of law.

You do not protect it by removing freedom or the rule of law.

Hydrogen will save us from global warming!

According to George Monbiot on BBC2's Newsnight last night. He even suggested we could have a pipeline network for hydrogen.

Well, its rubbish.

It is true that hydrogen does exist in abundance both on earth and in the solar system. The problem is that it mostly exists as parts of other compounds such as water, methane and indeed all organic compounds. The only large source of free hydrogen close by I know of is the sun, and I am reliably informed that its a bit hot there!

So given that it does not exist on its own on earth, can it be used as a fuel?

No, because you have to put at least the same amount of energy into extracting it from water as you will get back turning it back into water. You can extract it from methane, but you are either using a fossil fuel or if you are using bio gas, why bother? Why not just use the gas?

What hydrogen may well be useful as is as an energy store. You have spare energy, turn it into hydrogen and oxygen (from water) ship the hydrogen to where you want to use it, and get water back. (They do this on Shetland with wind energy, using spare energy to produce hydrogen which then can be used to generate electricity when there is no wind and to drive cars).

However let us not think that hydrogen will save us from anything. It won't. What will is renewable energies such as wind and solar, as well as bio fuels. There is an article on wikipedia about the hydrogen economy here.

The next World War

It seems to me that there are many people, (Newt Gingrich is an example that springs to mind) who wish to predict the next world war, a war of civilisations and goodness knows what else.

This seems to me in many ways a naked ambition to be the next Churchill, and frequently comes from people who seem to have a end timer ideology that scares me.

Whilst we may be heading into some sort of world war, I don't think it is inevitable, I think it can be avoided by the sensible use of diplomatic, covert, political and military means.

What does seem clear to me though is that we clearly do not have the troops, like the infantry to do the job at hand let alone deal with a world war.

We did have 200,000 in the army we now have of the order of 100,000.

We are tied up in Afghanistan without enough troops on the ground to do the job.

We did not have enough troops to deal with winning the military conflict in Iraq! (See my article here on why I think it all went wrong).

So, in short, if we want to avoid another world war we need more troops, (with some or all of the old regiments reformed), and if we want to fight one, we need more troops.

Either way we need more troops.

Where is the battleground?

Whilst Labour are currently fighting like rats in a sack, missing the point that if you are going to have a coup, get it over with quickly, many particularly on the right are wondering what exactly is the difference between Labour on the left and the Conservatives on the right?

After all isn't being a Conservative about low taxes and a small state?

Isn't Labour about a large state and close control?

Well, here is an article from Prospect magazine, which deals with the differences in attitudes and it is stark. It is a long article, and a bit boring, but please read it. It is worthwhile to understand where us Conservatives are coming from.

We may be huddled together, but do not mistake that for fundamental agreement, think of it as hand to hand combat rather than the long range missile strikes the right and left used to get into.

The fight between left and right is as fundamental as ever. It is between the state minutely micro managing peoples lives to solves what it sees as today's problems, and empowering individuals and groups of people to run their own lives.

It is about building a society that is not the same as the state, rather than the left looking to replace society with the state.

Al Qaida is winning the war on terrorism.

Grim news indeed if true. I think it is because what they are trying to do is to separate Muslims from the rest of us. To create a climate of fear and a clash of civilisations. I have discussed this in two previous articles on the "war on terror" here and here.

However what concerns me is this article in Fridays Telegraph here, reporting a YouGov survey which according to the report puts 53% of British people thinking Muslims are some sort of threat. That's half of Al Qaida's job done, now all they need to work on is making Muslims think the "war on terror" is in fact a "war against Islam", some thing made much easier by stupid people using silly language like "islamo fascist".

That said David Cameron is using far more sensible language. Obviously he thinks it is more important to deal with terrorism than play to the popularist gallery just to get votes.

The week before a plane load of passengers refused to fly with two people who looked suspicious. That really does not help either.

Our government and indeed the US government seem not to understand the battle we are fighting. It is very much a battle for hearts and minds. We can win as many battles as we like, but it is the war over all that counts.

Mind you, it is not all bad, it looks like the counter terrorist operation has caught some people intent on terrorism, having made "martyrdom videos". Obviously we will have to see what happens in court. It would have been a disaster if there was no credible evidence.

The War on Terror II

Over a month ago I wrote an article on the "War on Terror" and given current events I thought I would write another.

From out of the blue, in a speech trailed as dealing with transforming the home office, reforming the immigration and nationality department, and "rebalencing the criminal justice system", we got this from Dr. John Reid, secretary of State for the home office.

Others have covered the timing, and I share their concerns. Its not that I think the whole thing is made up, but that the fore knowledge has been used for political ends to justify the unjustifiable.

We are told that terrorism is the biggest threat since the Second Word War. That is patent rubbish.

George Bush described these people as "Islamic fascists".

This language is dangerous. It is not that we do not know who George Bush means, it is that it gives the enemy a weapon to use against us.

When these groups are trying to recruit young disaffected Muslims, they are not going to tell them that George Bush does not mean you, he means nutters like us. No they are going to twist the language for their own recruiting purposes.

As I said in my last article on the subject, this struggle is on two levels. The first is the tactical level, where we try to intercept and prevent acts of terror and they try to commit them. The more important level is the strategic level, which in this case is the political and propaganda level.

The French won every battle in Algeria yet lost the war. They lost the strategic war. That is the most important one.

In the strategic sphere they are trying to cleave as many Muslims away from us and into their ranks as possible. We need to be combating them there. Failure on the strategic level means losing. We can't afford to lose, just for the sake of using silly language.

Iraq: Why are we in this mess?

Well, Iraq looks like a mess to me. A bloody one in which the guilty don't die often enough, but the innocents die in droves.

Did it need to be like this? No.

There were two fundamental ways of avoiding this mess, the most obvious of which was not to invade. The other was to understand warfare a little better.

Warfare, politics and diplomacy all go hand in hand. When diplomacy fails war is always an option.

So what went wrong in Iraq? We won the war, and very easily?

Well, it was a failure to win the peace, or at least to win it so far. This failure is the result of many primary blunders, made by Donald Rumsfeld, who ignored any general who disagreed with him.

The Americans seemed to have sought advice from the Israelis, certainly over interrogations, but quite possibly over other things as well. The Israelis are very dismissive of Arabs as a fighting force, and looking at the various Arab Israeli wars you can see why. I wonder if this under estimation played any part in the complete lack of resource available to win the peace.

The mistakes of the war

• The coalition forces failed to impose martial law when they captured areas, because they just did not have the men or the will.
• They failed to plan to have a working police force.
• They made 500,000 armed men unemployed.
• They failed to guard the ammunition dumps.
• They failed to guard the borders.
• They failed to understand who the losers would be in the liberation of Iraq.
  
• They made political blunders of epic proportions.
  

Lets just look at that in more detail.

The failure to impose martial law

The Americans wrang their hands at the lawlessness that ensued after Baghdad fell. They talked of people having been oppressed letting go, as if this was only for a while.

War brings chaos, and criminality. Both make some people lots of money. Once law and order is lost, it is very hard to get back. Scores are settled, whilst more are created. Looting is bad news also. The ministries that could have contained vital intelligence information were ransacked, as was vital infrastructure. Vital infrastructure is still under attack.

The failure to plan for a working police force

This is amazing to me. For obvious reasons, the police force that existed at the time of the invasion was not trusted by the people because of the nature of the Ba'athist regime it was a part of. It was disbanded. However there was no replacement, in particular not enough troops to enforce martial law in the mean time.

The scale of criminality that then occurred was stagering. Kidnappings, killings, thefts.

I seems odd to me that this was not thought out before hand. You did not need to know that much about Iraq to understand that the police force as was needed either very urgent reform, or disbanding given how nasty the regime was, and how central the police were to it. So why not plan for this, and indeed either eventuality?

Making 500,000 armed men unemployed

Here is the position. You have just defeated an army of 500,000 fairly easily, partly because the army did not feel like fighting for Saddam. You have a country whose economy is not in robust health because of years of mismanagement and sanctions, and is about to be ravaged by looters. So what do you do with half a million armed men who can't get work because there are not enough jobs?

You make them unemployed? How are they going to feed their families? There is no welfare state. There is however money in criminality and money in fighting. This decision seems so bizarre to me. It has often been said that civilisation is only 3 meals away from anarchy. So which idiot made that decision?

The failure the guard the ammunition dumps

frankly I just do not understand why we did not guard them or destroy the weapons and ammunition in them. Bearing in mind the lawlessness that war brings, and the value of guns in such circumstances it is strange indeed that the ammunition dumps were not dealt with. Iraq became a net exporter of small arms after the war.

The failure to guard the borders

The USA has trouble guarding its borders with Mexico against illegal immigrants. Its Canadian border is not really guarded at all. Yet with that reality it seems that the coalition relied on neighboring countries to police Iraqs border for them. These borders are vast, mostly either desert or mountain, and very difficult to police. Even if those countries wanted to police them, and were with us all the way, the fact is that they don't have the resources, and people can be bribed in any case.

However the reality is there are elements whether non state actors or not, in Iran, Saudi Arabia and Syria who are less than benign. There are also lots of nutters about who want to attack us, for all sorts of reasons.

The inability to control the borders from day one to date has been a cataclysmic disaster.

The failure to understand who the losers would be

I just can't see that any account has been taken of who would be unhappy to see a stable democratic Iraq. So lets look at who the losers would be.

• Sunni Arab dominance.
  
• Syria
• Iran

Sunni Arab dominance

There is no country in the Middle East, where the Shia hold sway. In most countries it is Sunni Muslims, in Syria it is the Alawites, and in Lebanon Maronite Christians hold power in a national pact. The fact is that Sunnis Arabs are a minority in Iraq. A democratic government in Iraq would give Shia Muslims a much larger say in politics than anywhere else in the Middle East, causing Sunni extremists to be upset. They could come over from Saudi Arabia, Jordan or Syria.

Syria

Syria is an interesting country. It produces enough oil to meet its own needs and has craftsmen that can handmake the most beautiful things. It is however run by a useless regime more concerned about staying in power than advancing its own people. A relatively small religious minority runs the country as well.

A well run prosperous liberal democracy made up of similar people is a definite threat as Syrians are bound to ask why they don't have the same there?

So the democratisation of Iraq is not in the Syrian regimes interests. We seem to have relied on shouting at Syria to get it to stop insurgents. This is dumb. Besides which even if they wanted to they can't watch the whole border.

Iran

I think most of us are used to thinking of Iran as the center of Shia Islam. This is because although there are lots of Shia about, Iran is the only country run by the Shia. The Holy City of Qom is also in Iran. The Ayatollahs in Iran were the effective leaders of the Shia world.

The problem the Iranians have is that Iran is not the center of Shia Islam, Iraq is, specifically centered in the Holy Cities of Najaf and Karbala, and its Ayatollahs are much more moderate than those in Iran, in particular Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, and the late Abdul Majid al-Khoei who believe in such radical ideas as no religion in politics. The fact that these people have more authority over Shia Islam and indeed present a better image of it AND want religion out of politics makes a successful Iraq a direct threat to the loony squad in Iran, AND yet we did not guard the borders? This is madness.

I won't even discuss the Kurdish question, and the problems that causes Turkey.

The political blunders

I wrote an article on The War on Terror a few days ago, one of the main themes of which was how both politics and propaganda play a larger part in fighting terror than military means. We have to understand that the enemy uses what we do against us. Abu Ghraib and the Guantanamo Bay detainment camp are used ruthlessly by our enemies to show how "this is a war against Islam" , and how evil we all are. It also incites otherwise reasonable people to hate us. We can't afford blunders like this. It costs the lives of our soldiers and their civilians.


So in sort, we needed at least twice the number of troops on the ground to do the job. The reason why we did not have them is the complete arrogance and ignorance of one man, Donald Rumsfeld.

So is it beyond repair? I hope not.