Clinging to the wreckage

Latest projections from the BBC (here):

The BBC projection suggests David Cameron's Conservatives will have 306 seats. If there are 10 Unionists elected in Northern Ireland then Mr Cameron might be able to command 316 - probably still slightly too few for him to be sure of winning a Queen's Speech.
But Labour and the Lib Dems together would have 317 seats, according to the BBC figures, which even with three SDLP MPs would still leave them at 320 - again probably just a few votes short.

If I were Gordon, I'd be inclined to pack it in and tell her maj to call on Cameron. Because, even with Clegg's LibDems, Gordon does not have sufficient troops to rule the roost. Let Cameron take the opprobrium for the savage cuts and turf him out once he has shown his hand. But Gordon will no doubt be desperate to retain his place in No 10.

Either way, another general election is on the cards sooner rather than later. And won't that be something to look forward to?

Choices, choices ...

Will I stay up for it? Yes, of course I will.

But I don't much fancy Dimblebore on BBC TV nor his chum Jeremy Vine on the latest version of the swingometer. And ITV? Well, it's ITV, isn't it; they don't really have the pennies to put on a decent show.

The radio, then? Radio 4 has Jim Naughtie and that woman Carolyn Quinn (awful, awful, awful) which kinda rules them out. While the World Service has pompous old Robin Lustig. And of Radio 5, the least said the better.

So I guess I'll be channel-hopping as usual.

No comment

Euro to the £:

Source: BBC

It's the big day

Do you really want this to happen? From The Indie (here):

David Cameron moves into Downing Street and immediately announces the make-up of his Cabinet: William Hague is confirmed as Foreign Secretary, George Osborne as Chancellor, Michael Gove as Schools Secretary and Andrew Lansley as Health Secretary. But there is disappointment for Chris Grayling, who had hoped of becoming Home Secretary; the job goes to Jeremy Hunt. In a downbeat speech Mr Cameron warns of deep public spending cuts ahead, confirming that an
austerity Budget will take place within 50 days; does that mean the rate of VAT will rise? The National Security Council meets to discuss the Afghanistan war.
The Queen's Speech on 25 May includes moves to set up "free" schools, scrap identity cards and regional assemblies, and impose a public sector pay freeze for a year.

Vote wisely. And may the best man win, provided it's not a Tory ...

Music of the week

In 1981 (or maybe 1980), I saw this group perform this song at an open-air concert in Albuquerque, New Mexico. (Yeah, I know, but in my younger days I got about a bit.) I've still got the t-shirt.



What really impressed me at the concert were the Coors tankers (the size of petrol tankers) dispensing beer from a tiny tap in their side.

Quote of the day

Back to the Greeks. This is Larry Elliott, a writer whom I usually admire, in The Guardian:

... while demand is going to be sucked out of the Greek economy through a three-year pay and pension freeze, together with a big jump in VAT, there is unlikely to be a pick-up in exports to compensate. Instead, the slump will deepen. Greece, without the benefit of stronger growth, will be unable to meet its ambitious targets for reducing the deficit, which in turn will lead to demands for even deeper budgetary cuts, which will weaken demand still further.
That is not a recovery plan. It is an economic death spiral.

Aye well, I'll not disagree too strongly. But the only alternative seems to me to be abandoning the euro and defaulting on the debt. And the consequences of such action are probably just as difficult - and not just for Greece.

Does no-one care about the frogs?

Never trust a vegetarian. At the drop of a hat, they will be sneaking off to devour a bacon sandwich. Look at this lot, as reported in The Independent:

Water voles have developed a penchant for one of the most rarefied delicacies of French cuisine – frogs' legs – conservationists have discovered. The shy and furry rodents, immortalised by the character of Ratty in Kenneth Grahame's The Wind in the Willows, had previously been considered entirely herbivorous, subsisting on a diet of aquatic plants.
But ecologists from British Waterways found evidence of unusual eating preferences among water voles during a recent survey of the Kennet & Avon Canal in Berkshire. At several of the animals' "feeding stations" in the canalside vegetation were numerous dead frogs – with their legs removed.

Disgraceful behaviour. I bet that they are LibDem voters.

Celebrity endorsement

Now look, beggars can't be choosers. Murdo was the best the Tories could get. OK, he's not Shir Sean, nor JKR but, hey, an ex-Celtic footballer is better than nothing. It could have been worse. Couldn't it?

Tactical Voting

I understand the necessity of it. Politics is a rough old game. And maybe I'm being sentimental. But when I see Labour bigwigs like Peter Orangeman Hain and Blinky Balls suggesting that Labour voters might support the LibDems in those seats where the latter have a greater chance of defeating the Tories, I always think of the poor Labour candidates in such seats. How must they feel, hearing that the high heidyins in their party are prepared to sell them out? Their one chance for glory, admittedly a slim chance but a chance nonetheless, being sacrificed for the allegedly greater good of overall party advantage.

In praise of the backroom boys and girls

Why Cameron is not fit to be Prime Minister. The Guardian reports:

Amid signs that the Tories are failing to build a decisive lead, Cameron today reassured wavering voters that frontline services would not be cut.
Pledging to act in a "big-hearted way", Cameron told BBC1's Andrew Marr Show: "What I can tell you is any cabinet minister, if I win the election, who comes to me and says: 'Here are my plans' and they involve frontline reductions, they'll be sent straight back to their department to go away and think again.
After 13 years of Labour, there is a lot of wasteful spending, a lot of money that doesn't reach the frontline."

Well fine, bloody fine. We all admire nurses. But somebody needs to recruit them, and someone else needs to pay them their wages, and someone else needs to provide them with their uniforms. By any definition, these somebodies are not frontline staff; does that mean that they can more readily be dispensed with?

And what about the mechanic who maintains the hospital's heating system, the receptionist who books in the patients, the kitchen assistants who prepare the patients' meals, the accountant who does the hospital books?

Hospitals are complex organisations, which is why they need administrators. I accept that there may be too many of them and that some of them may be overpaid - but sacking the lot is not a sensible answer.

So can we stop pretending that cutting the public sector is a simple matter? And can we abandon the false distinction between frontline staff (good) and backroom staff (bad)? And could the politicians at least pretend to be grown-ups?

Doom and gloom somewhat abated for the moment

After a weekend of black depression when I feared the Tories might be pulling away, my equilibrium is somewhat restored by today's two polls. YouGov has the Tories at 34%, with the LibDems on 29% and Labour on 28%; ICM has the Tories on 33%, with both the LibDems and Labour on 28%.

A Tory lead of 5 percentage points simply doesn't cut it in terms of delivering an absolute majority, while neither Labour nor LibDems are slipping back towards wipeout territory. So game on, as the more excitable sports commentators are wont to say.

Have we not been here before? The BBC reports:

Eurozone members and the IMF have agreed a 110bn-euro (£95bn; $146.2bn) three-year bail-out package to rescue Greece's embattled economy.
In return for the loans, Greece will make major austerity cuts which Prime Minister George Papandreou said involved "great sacrifices".

Aye weel. You might want to avoid counting your chickens. The Germans need to secure parliamentary agreement to the loans. And then there is the prospect of legal action in the German courts to declare the loans as unconstitutional.

It just gets worse and worse

Scandal. Cleggy is an intellectual. Not only does he read books but he reads difficult ones - Beckett no less.

What is the world coming to? A decent politician might admit to an occasional dalliance with Deighton, Clancy or Archer (if a Tory). I know that all the Labour pols claim to have read Tressell but no-one really believed them. Whereas Cleggy sounds as if he really has read Beckett.

It will end in tears, I tell you.

On the prospect of a Conservative Government

Draw the curtains, Mabel, and put out the lights; we may as well go to bed for the next five years.

Many of you won't remember what it's like. Well, it's no fun, I can tell you. Skies are grey, the plagues return, even the birdies will stop their singing and Hibs will be relegated.

Expect to be taxed until the pips squeak. They may not increase your national insurance contributions but Georgie-Porgie will have his evil way with VAT and income tax. The bankers will be alright, of course, and the rich will duly escape their liability for inheritance tax. On the other hand, the poor will be ground into dust with savage cuts in welfare benefits. And they'll take away my bus-pass.

Cameron's moonface will be ubiquitous on the telly and I will grind my remaining teeth at his assumption that the natural order of things has been restored. The nasties (think Grayling, think Hammond, think - horror of horrors - Liam Fox) will come out of the woodwork to torment those of a liberal disposition. And that solitary Scottish Tory MP, the one with the uncanny resemblance to the opera singer in the Go-Compare ads, will be on Scottish Newsnicht three times a week.

And don't think they'll do anything serious about electoral reform or parliamentary expenses. The House of Lords will continue to exert its baleful influence and Scottish MPs may or may not be allowed to vote on non-Scottish matters. Calman will put in a drawer and forgotten about, while the howls of outrage from north of the border on this and on the cuts will calmly be ignored.

So prepare yourself for the misery to come. Because, sure as eggs is eggs, a hard rain's gonna fall.

Channelling Morecambe and Wise

I have absolutely no idea what is going on here. (Symptomatic of the entire campaign, then.) Are Brown and Clegg doing some kind of dance? And what is Cameron looking at?

Why Martha Kearney is a pain in the butt

1. She's a whiner.
2. She does not respond to the answers of her interviewee. It's as if she has all her questions written down in advance and is going to proceed with them come what may.
3. Every damn question is preceded with "Do you think that ..."

There are plenty of splendid female presenters on the BBC including Ritula Shah and Lise Doucet (although the latter speaks too quickly sometimes), while the World Service has lots of them, including Anne-Marie Sieghart and Clare Balderson. So why is damn Martha given the plum of World at One?

These things happen

It's not what he said - or rather it's not only what he said. It's the kind of mistake which you or I might have made. But then you and I are not senior politicians, supposedly accustomed to dealing with microphones (not to mention dealing with people).

But, hey, it's happened. We are fortunate indeed if this is the worst complaint with which to berate one of our political leaders. And the man has suffered enough. So let us move along ...

Music of the week

I regret to say that, not unlike certain politicians, I have been guilty in the recent past of pursuing a populist, middle-of-the-road agenda. So chances are that you will not find this week's choice to your musical taste. Well, too bad. This lady has seen me through good times and bad and my devotion knows no bounds. Play it, Gillian:

Extravagance

And there goes 50,000 smackers ...

Looking better

Euro to the £:

Source: BBC

Quote of the day

Blinky Balls gets the treatment from Matthew Norman in The Indie:

Cocky, fake, slimy, inelegant, ineloquent, charmless, witless, weird, sinister, glacially cold and luminescently remote, he may be the most chillingly repulsive politician of even this golden generation. If Pixar set out to create a CGI character to embody everything the public has learned to despise about its political class, they'd be thrilled to come up with this lizardy schemer, who may have slipped through a tear in the fabric of space-time himself. Certainly he seems best suited to skulking beneath stone archways, in a purple robe, sibilantly sidling poison into the bloodstream of the medieval Vatican.

Don't sit on the fence, Matthew, tell us what you really think.

Is Blinky really that nasty? Well, probably. Worth reading the whole article.

It's one way of deciding ...

With whom would you prefer to have dinner?

a) Grumpy Gordon (Lab)
b) Dave the toff (Con)
c) Nick the foreign toff (LibDem)
d) Slightly portly Eck (SNP)
e) Nasty Nick (BNP)
f) Lord Snooty (UKIP)
g) Dr Caroline Lucas (Green)

No contest, is it?

How are we doing so far?

Relax - a week on Friday and it will all be over. Just as well, I hear you whimper. So how are we doing? Not well, I fear.

None of the parties has come clean about the public spendng cuts and/or tax increases required to reduce the deficit to the level to which each is ostensibly committed. None of them will therefore have a mandate to do what needs to be done. Which in turn means an unholy row when whichever of the parties (or combinations thereof) takes office seeks to implement a programme for action. Winning the election may not therefore be of longer-term political advantage. (Insert here your own 'Ah didnae ken/well ye ken noo' joke).

What do the polls tell us? I draw two main conclusions. First, the Tories are stuck at about 35%, enough to give them the most seats but not enough for an absolute majority (despite Boris' entertaining but mistaken fulminations in this morning's Telegraph). Unless the Tories can get much closer to 40%, we are faced with a hung parliament. A week is a long time in politics, I know, but is it long enough for the toffs to recover a winning lead?

Secondly, Labour are now lying third in terms of the popular vote. Regardless of how many seats this may deliver, it will be seen as a defeat for Brown and the manoeuvring to replace him has already begun. Unfair, perhaps, as Labour was never likely to have a winning hand at this election; but it has been a shoddy, ill-directed campaign up to now, marked by an increasingly desperate flailing about in the search for a tune which will play with the voters. Can they recover the ground lost before next Thursday? Of course they can. Will they? Seems doubtful to me.

Meanwhile, the First Minister is reduced to petulantly stamping his feet on the sidelines. Our Alex is giving an all too accurate impression of a wee laddie shouting at the assembled throng 'Look at me, look at me'; nobody sees him, however, and nobody is listening. But grace under pressure is not a quality one usually associates with Mr Salmond.

So there we are. Cursed to live in interesting times.

What they're not telling us

It's a conspiracy of silence: batten down the hatches or prepare to emigrate. The FT has been doing the sums:

FT costings of a range of the choices that the next chancellor will face show that almost the whole population would be hit as the new government makes £30bn-£40bn of cuts in real terms to halve the deficit.
An online simulator, developed by the FT using government figures, suggests a saving of that scale would require all of the following: a 5 per cent cut in public sector pay; freezing benefits for a year; means-testing child benefit; abolishing winter fuel payments and free television licences; reducing prison numbers by a quarter; axing the two planned aircraft carriers; withdrawing free bus passes for pensioners; delaying Crossrail for three years; halving roads maintenance; stopping school building; halving the spending on teaching assistants and NHS dentistry; and cutting funding to Scotland and Wales by 10 per cent.

Don't expect to hear any explanations in Thursday's debate.

But as long as the richest get richer, that's all right.

No comment

Credit to Beau Bo D'or.

Cleggy for PM?

Hey, it's not impossible. If Labour drifted down to 25% (and they would not have to drift very far) and the Tories slipped down to 29%, while the LibDems shot up to 38.2%, then the yellow perils would have the most seats at 223, with Labour on 213 and the Tories on 185.

Today's YouGov poll in The Sun has the Tories on 34%, the LibDems on 29% and Labour on 28%.

Ok, it's stretching it a bit to suggest that the LibDems can put on 9 percentage points in less than two weeks, but who knows?

Worrying report of the day

From The Independent (here):

The Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) assured the public that air services were safe last night, despite the emergency grounding of RAF training flights following the discovery of volcanic ash. Responding to the decision to suspend flights of the £69m Typhoon jets to check for the presence of volcanic particles, Britain's air regulator said commercial airlines had made "no reports of damage to [commercial] planes".
The existence of ash in the Typhoon, stationed at RAF Coningsby in Lincolnshire, echoed the damage done to a Finnish Boeing F-18 Hornet, which collected sharp volcanic dust following a test flight last Thursday. The Finnish air force released pictures of the engine, saying: "The images show that short-term flying can cause substantial damage to an aircraft engine." Last night, the Ministry of Defence sought to downplay the threat to passengers, saying the ash had not caused any damage. "These are very high-performance jets so they are just being extra-cautious," a spokesman said, adding operational flying would continue.

Thinking of the wider picture, the authorities wouldn't, would they? They just couldn't ...

It's not the chicken

Look, it's a private matter. I just happen to find myself in a race between going bald and going grey. Mildly entertaining for me (saddo that I am) but nobody else's business.

Certainly nothing to do with eating chicken.

How the world works

Let us suppose that an act of god, a flood or a volcano perhaps, caused you to miss your Ryanair flight. Or maybe it was an act of government, such as a collapsed bridge or being arrested for some reason. How would you rate your chances of getting a refund from Ryanair? Yeah, me too. Oh no, they would say, we have rules about these things and the terms and conditions were clearly (allowing for the small print) set out when you booked your flight.

But now the boot's on the other foot and the rules can simply be ignored. The Guardian reports:

The budget airline Ryanair today sparked a furious response from politicians and risked a consumer backlash by refusing to pay the hotel and food bills of passengers stranded by the volcanic ash cloud, in a blatant refusal to abide by strict EU consumer rules.
As Britain's skies opened for business at last after a catastrophic six-day shutdown, the carrier's chief executive, Michael O'Leary, told passengers his airline would not meet hotel and subsistence expenses incurred while they were stuck abroad. Ryanair would reimburse travellers the original price of their air fare and no more, he said.

Whoever said that the world was fair was wrong.

Quote of the day

Matthew Norman in The Indie (here):

The final word goes, as it should, to Melanie Phillips. "Unfortunately Cameron has gone along with Labour and the British intelligentsia in moving the centre of political gravity to the left," blogs Her Imperial Madness. "Thus the Conservative Party effectively agrees that the true common ground of political and public life is actually an extremist position." I'll spend a few days working on this. I think she's saying that even a majority-held central position is axiomatically extremist if it isn't hers. But still early doors.

She's as daft as a brush ...

The wingnuts emerge

Fair and balanced reporting from the rightwing press?

The Mail: "Clegg's Nazi slur on Britain: Lib Dem says our 'delusions of grandeur' at winning the war are greater cross to bear than German guilt"

The Express: "NICK CLEGG'S CRAZY IMMIGRATION POLICY"

The Sun: "NICK Clegg was plunged into a sleaze row last night after it was claimed cash from Liberal Democrat donors was paid into his private bank account."

The Telegraph: "Nick Clegg, the donors and the bank account payments"

More like Fox News every day. The consolation - they wouldn't put the boot in if they didn't think that Cleggy has a good chance.


I refuse to provide links to these rags - if you want to read them, you'll have to look them up yourselves.

Ken joins the dark side

I have always found Ken Clarke to be a fairly congenial politician, even if he is a Tory. Yes, of course, the hushpuppies, the cheroots, the jazz are all part of a carefully prepared front to convince the simple-minded that Ken is at least human. Nevertheless, for the most part, it is successful: what you see is what you get.

But I cannot see how his latest ploy has any hope of success. Vote for us, or the world will go to hell in a handbasket, is at best a counsel of despair. It is utterly negative, conveying no hint of the optimism necessary to convince the voter that somewhere out there is the possibility of a better future.

It is also patently and demonstrably untrue: coalition and/or minority governments are no less capable of taking the difficult decisions, especially when the three potential partners pusillanimously share the central proposition on the need to rein back the deficit. Would a Conservative government adopt a programme which was radically different from that which might be adopted by a Lib-Lab coalition? Only in the minor details, important but hardly game-changing.

So enough of the blackmail, Ken. Tell us what you positively want to do and stop panicking.

Where's George?

This is turning out to be a strange election campaign. I am even starting to feel sorry for Georgie-Porgy. The Guardian reports:

Naturally, there was no sign of George Osborne, who is now widely believed to have been bundled into a priest hole last week, and may well be secured there for the remainder of the campaign. Poor George. Imagine being so distasteful, even before holding office, that it is regarded as politic to keep you from public view, in the manner of an acutely porphyric Renaissance princeling who once tried to hump the Queen of Spain's leg. Pray heaven he gets an outing in the next few days, or people will begin to talk.

I thought that he was supposed to be managing the Tory campaign. But the faceless suits seem to have taken over.

Making it up

Why does he do it? He must have known that his assertion would be proved baseless, so why did he go ahead and say it? According to The Times:

Consular officials faced tired and angry travellers in Madrid after coaches promised by Gordon Brown failed to materialise. The Prime Minister announced they were already in Madrid but the Foreign Office tonight admitted that the coaches would not leave Dover until tomorrow morning. A Foreign Office spokesperson said 50 coaches would leave in the morning, followed by 100 more over the coming days. They would be unlikely to begin transporting travellers back to Britain until Thursday at the earliest.

Sky News has the same story:

Mr Brown told Radio One's Newsbeat programme that people may be able to travel to Madrid as a "hub" as it has been unaffected by the volcanic ash affecting flights across Europe.
He said that people stuck in Asia, Africa and America could land in the Spanish capital before being taken back to the UK in coaches laid on by the Government.
"We're putting on coaches from Madrid," he said. "There's 100 already there in Madrid to do it."
But as thousands of delayed travellers arrived in the city, there was no sign of the promised coaches.

Was he told that 100 coaches were already in Madrid? I doubt it - civil servants are trained to avoid misleading ministers. And why tell the Prime Minister something that would so quickly be exposed as untrue?

Is it a form of Tourette's syndrome, where a minister blurts out what he would like to be true or what he thinks his listeners would like to hear, regardless of the consequences? Or does he somehow convince himself that announcing something makes it happen?

Furthermore, he has previous form.

Whatever the reason, because of this inability to distinguish the truth, he deserves to lose the election. We simply cannot have this man making up fairy stories as he goes along.

Sod it!

Well OK, if you absolutely insist, here it is:

Music of the week

Enjoy:

Is Cameron losing it?

I wonder if Cameron sees the inherent contradiction in what he is saying:

In a Guardian interview Cameron adopted a clear Vote Clegg, Get Brown message, saying: "It is the Conservatives who offer decisive change – anything else and you risk being stuck with what you have got."
After a weekend in which some senior Tories attacked the Lib Dems head-on, their leader took a different tack. "My response to all this is to redouble the positive," he said, insisting he will not indulge in negative tactics to claw back lost support.

Given that his main message is that we risk five more years of Labour, how can this be perceived as a positive approach?

No homophobia here

If you want to snog a team-mate, why not do it in a football stadium, before a tv audience of millions?

None of them is JFK

What? Oh, the debate.

Well, Gordon seemed to be wearing too much lipstick. And Dave should learn how to say "properly" properly; it is not "proply" - the correct pronunciation involves three syllables.

Otherwise, not much fussed.

Eyjafjallajoekull

Splendid name by the way.

Me, I blame that nice Mr Darling. If he hadn't used anti-terrorist legislation to seize the Icelandic assets in British banks and if he hadn't insisted on penal terms for the repayment by Iceland of the money he'd used to compensate British institutions for the losses of their Icelandic investments, we might not be facing the revenge of the Norns in the form of all this ash. But there's no use crying over spilt milk.

According to The Independent, the situation is as follows:

The last time the Eyjafjallajoekull volcano on the southern flank of Iceland erupted was in 1821 and that event took almost two years to subside. Volcanologists are unsure whether the current eruption is going to be a similar, long-lived affair with months or even years of air-traffic disruption.
...
This eruption is not particularly big, but there is a possibility that it might continue for weeks or months, making it difficult for air-traffic controllers who have to take every precaution to prevent aircraft from flying into a cloud of ash, which cannot be detected by an aircraft's on-board radar.

Now think about that for a moment. Let us say that the interruption to air traffic lasts for the next six months. No summer holidays this year, not if they require flights; not even any weekend mini-breaks (unless you fancy Blackpool or Rothesay). Sport will be disrupted - how will Man U or Bayern Munich get to Madrid for the Champions League final? I understand that there are already doubts about this weekend's Heineken Cup matches. And what about the World Cup in South Africa?

Then there are the airlines - how many of them would survive a prolomged lay-off? And all those jobs at airports.

Let us hope that the volcano stops spouting and the wind changes. Soon.

It messes up the engines, apparently

Strange, how something as natural as a plume of volcanic ash can force the closure of Scotland's airports. I suppose that in our modern, sophisticated society it is occasionally salutary to be reminded that man's technological genius may be limited by the forces of nature.

And, hey, better safe than sorry.

Singing in the rain

If it's any consolation (not for me, obviously), the predicted weather out here for the next four days is:

Tomorrow: light rain, 64 degrees
Thursday: light rain, 64 degrees
Friday: heavy rain, 64 degrees
Saturday: heavy rain, 64 degrees

Oh woe ...

They are all at it

Am I being unreasonable? I have scanned the manifestos, both Labour and Tory, but neither offers any clue as to how they will reduce the fiscal deficit, arguably the most important question facing the nation as it makes its political choice.

They must have thought about it. Or are we expected to believe that the election will simply magic away the need to cut public spending and raise taxes?

And, yes, I know that no-one will welcome a whacking great increase in VAT or a cutback in spending but we are all well aware that either or both is bound to happen. We're not all children - what will be the effect of promising us sweeties then wielding the axe?

Put not your faith in politicians - they'll screw you again and again and again.

Shaking the money-tree

Here we go again. This month, last month, the month before that. The masters of the universe are suckered once more. The Telegraph reports:

The euro soared in early trading on Monday as traders welcomed a rescue package for Greece agreed by Eurozone countries and the International Monetary Fund.

The single currency, which has been battered in foreign-exchange markets so far this year, was up almost 2 cents at $1.3683 in London trading. It also climbed against sterling and the Japanese yen.

How many times does the EU have to pretend to organise a bail-out for our Greek chums, before the markets twig that it's never going to happen?

Housekeeping

Off to Spain this morning, so light blogging for the nest day or two.

Incidentally, this is my 2,500th post since I began this blog nearly 5 years ago. What an utter waste of time and effort! Still, it's been fun for me and I've enjoyed it. Congratulations to those of you who have stayed with me down the years.

Same old Tories

I won't benefit from that nice Mr Osborne's latest back-of-a-fagpacket concoction, but it seems a splendid idea.

It's good to see some naked social engineering for a change; never mind those libertarian liberals who insist that the government should keep its filthy mitts out of the family bedroom. And as for those cohabiting couples who refuse to get married, well the loss of the transferable bit of the allowance serves you right. When I were a lad, it was called living in sin and, I tell you this, there's far too much of it going on.

Of course £3 per week is not a lot of dosh. But if it encourages married couples to stick together, even when they're miserable through hating each other, then it is to be welcomed. And, as a bonus, you don't even need to have children to be a qualifying couple. (Obviously, the little wifie would need to stay at home rather than work, but that's the best place for her, surely.)

And I'm confident that the bankers will be delighted to be financing the scheme. A chance for them to do some good. Of course they'll squeal about it and threaten to move to Switzerland, but as usual they'll only be pretending.

HMRC will also be chuffed. They will need more staff to handle all the claims, to monitor them and to advise employers of the revised tax allowances, because I doubt if it can be handled under the PAYE system.

So, a happy outcome all round. What's next? A reintroduction of national service, perhaps?

Nostalgia is not what it used to be

Whatever happened to Meccano, Hornby Dublo and Dinky Toys? Find out here.

Yes, I spent a lot of enjoyably wasted hours on all three during the 1950s.

Porkie Detector (No 3)

If you must tell lies, it would be helpful if - at the very least - you tried to make them believable. Reciting porkies which can be readily and obviously disproved is not only stupid on the part of the reciter; it assumes the rest of us are numpties. The Guardian reports:

Gordon Brown's claim that the murder of Croydon teenager Sally Anne Bowman would have gone unsolved under Tory proposals to overhaul the DNA database were yesterday dismissed as "election fever" by civil liberties groups.

The prime minister accused the Tories of abandoning their traditional tough stance on crime by saying they would put an end to the indefinite retention of DNA profiles of people arrested but not convicted for violent disorder and remove the bulk of the records of innocent people.

He cited Bowman's murder in 2005 as an example of a crime solved using Labour's comprehensive DNA database – but Human Rights group Liberty said her killer, Mark Dixie, was caught because his DNA had been matched after it was taken over a violent assault in 2006.

Bowman, a 19-year-old aspiring model, was murdered in the driveway of her Croydon home. Dixie was convicted in 2008 on the basis of DNA evidence which also cleared her boyfriend, who dropped her off moments before she was killed.

Shami Chakrabarti, director of Liberty, said: "Election fever seems to be confusing the debate about DNA retention. It has been suggested that the tragic case of Sally Anne Bowman was only solved because her murderer was 'an innocent' on the database. In fact, he was arrested for a separate violent offence and it was then that his DNA was matched to the crime scene. We all agree that DNA taken on arrest should be checked against unsolved crimes. This is entirely different from stockpiling the DNA of innocent men, women and children for years on end."

Music of the week

Here you go - one of the great 1960s oldies:

Here's a conundrum

I see that some of the world cup matches are to be broadcast in 3-D. I wonder if the England players will be able to cope with playing in three dimensions?

Quote of the day

Johann Hari in The Indie (here):

He [Cameron] will give a £1.2bn inheritance tax cut to the richest 2 per cent in Britain – with most going to the 3,000 wealthiest estates (including his wife's). Then he promises to end the 50p top rate of tax, giving another £2.4bn to the richest 1 per cent. Then he has pledged to cut taxes on the pensions of the richest, handing another £3.2bn to the same 1 per cent. Then his marriage tax relief policies will give 13 times more to the rich than the poor. To pay for this, he will slash programmes for the middle and the skint, like the Child Trust Fund, SureStart and state schools.

So he ain't no Robin Hood. Same old Tories.

A celebrity writes

My name is Sir Michael Caine. (Don't forget the Sir.) Not a lot of people know that.

I like to pretend I'm a hard man. As I was in the movie Get Carter. Of course I'm 77 now and I can't mix it with the baddies like I used to. But I've still got all my marbles - well most of them, I fink.

And, yeah, alright, I did threaten to leave the UK and become a tax exile. But the voters should listen to me because I'm the salt of the earth, doncha know.

Anyway, this posh git (says his name is Dave) wants me to attend his announcement of a new national service scheme. Bit of a waste of time, if you ask me. The scheme is voluntary and it only lasts two months, which is hardly going to make any difference. But I'm doing nothing else and it offers some publicity, and maybe a seat in the House of Lords.

No, I don't remember The Muppet Christmas Carol. Or The Swarm.

A pedant writes

The Guardian reports:

The Duchess of Cornwall was taken to hospital in Aberdeen today after fracturing her leg as she was out walking near the Prince of Wales's Highland retreat on the Balmoral estate.

If you want to be picky about it (and I do), as it happened in Scotland, should it not be the Duchess of Rothesay?

Sympathies about the leg, by the way.

Hammering the public sector - episode 38

I have little sympathy with high-earning public sector fatcats but is this really worth the trouble?

Public sector chiefs earning hundreds of thousands of pounds a year would have their salaries cut back by a Conservative government under a radical scheme to link their earnings to the lowest-paid workers in their organisation, David Cameron announces today.

Er, not quite. Let's try again:

A Tory government would establish a fair pay review to ensure that no senior manager in the public sector can earn more than 20 times more than the lowest- paid person in their organisation.

Oh, they're going to set up a review. How exciting - not.

What sort of fatcat salaries are we talking about? Well, the highest quoted is £392,000. And how many are likely to be affected? Perhaps as many as 200. OK, it's not going to change the world, but the principle is not unimportant. Nevertheless, it seems a lot of effort for not a lot of reward.

Meanwhile, the obscenities of private sector fatcat pay, such as this one, are permitted to continue unhindered.

Hamid and the waccybaccy

Yes, I know that friend and ally Hamid has recently been letting the side down, but this kind of response is not going to make life any easier for our brave boys:

CLAIMS by a former US ambassador that Hamid Karzai has a drug habit are based on a classified report about life in the presidential palace, western officials have told The Scotsman. In it, sources close to president Karzai, allege he gets high in a presidential toilet.

Peter Galbraith, the former deputy head of the United Nations mission in Afghanistan, told US television this week that Mr Karzai has "a certain fondness for some of Afghanistan's most profitable exports".

Whirliebirds *

I read about this in The Scotsman and thought that the use of a helicopter was a bit extravagant for our Bella:

THE Conservatives will today provide further evidence of their campaigning fire-power as Annabel Goldie takes to the air in a frenetic attempt to visit all their Scottish target seats in a day.

Ms Goldie will use a helicopter to travel from Hawick in the south, Edinburgh in the east, Argyll in the west and Aberdeenshire in the north in a move echoing David Cameron's announcement that he had booked several aircraft to hurtle him around the country.

But hidden halfway down the article was the truth:

Ms Goldie will be joined by shadow Foreign Secretary William Hague on a day of hectic campaigning.

Despite The Scotsman's implications, did you really think that Bella would get a chopper without Mr Hague tagging along?


" Whirliebirds was a TV programme back in the dark ages which featured two helicopters.

Your fashion correspondent writes

Doncha just love the way in which The Guardian concentrates on the areas of electoral importance?

Day two and Sarah Brown's election wardrobe seems to be heavily reliant on the plain coloured cardigan. Yesterday's version was lime yellow with a round neck, while on Tuesday she showcased a powder violet version from Reiss, styled with a narrow leather belt. Commentators have already filed the campaign cardigan as "school-run dressing".

Hey, if the lady wants to wear a cardie, then it's OK with me ...

Porkie Detector (No 2)

The BBC reports:

Labour has pledged to bring at least 100,000 skilled jobs to Scotland in five years, as part of its vision for a "high-tech" economy.

Scottish leader Iain Gray made the claim as the first full day of election campaigning got under way.

It would be nice if it were true, but it's only words. 20,000 skilled jobs per year for five years? Not probable. And even if it were achievable, where are all the skilled workers to fill these jobs?

New feature

At vast expense, this blog has developed a new facility for the period of the election. It is essentially a sophisticated porkie detector and we will bring to you as often as possible news of those politicians who set off the alarm bell.

Today, we have the shadow chancellor in The Times:

George Osborne today insisted he could cut taxes and the deficit without raising VAT.

Don't be a silly-billy, Georgie-Porgie. Of course you can't.

Lost among the stacks

Keef and the Dewey Decimal System. Now there's an association you never thought of. The Guardian reports:

This is a seminal moment for librarianship. For 134 years, geeky men with acne and prematurely aged women in spectacles have quietly gone about cataloguing books according to the principles of Melvil Dewey, largely ignored by the rest of us. But now rock legend Keith Richards has admitted to a passion for librarianship, and a failed attempt to apply the Dewey system to his own large private library.

What next? Jagger and differential calculus? Lady Gaga and botanical taxonomy?

Still telling porkies

Why No 10 is its own worst enemy, principally by denying black is white, even when it is blatantly obvious. The Independent reports:

After the disaster on the Caribbean island nation three months ago, which killed an estimated 230,000 people, a celebrity cover version of REM's "Everybody Hurts" was produced, with the Prime Minister announcing that he had decided to waive VAT on the single.

However, as The Independent revealed yesterday, a furious Whitehall row erupted when officials at the Department for International Development (DfID) were told that the Treasury was going to make them find the lost revenue by taking it from other (non-Haiti) aid projects. Sources at both departments confirmed the plan.

...

Downing Street subsequently denied that this had been the plan and, following this newspaper's report, announced yesterday that no aid projects would suffer. No 10 said that DfID would initially foot the bill for the lost VAT – and that the Treasury will now have to refund it.

You will note that No 10 goes for bare-faced denial. No suggestion of a mistake or a misunderstanding. No, just argue that black was white. And don't give a toss whether anyone believes you. Meanwhile No 10's credibility is once again dragged into the sewer.

Shock! Horror! (2)

Judges revealed to be anti-trades unions! Who would have guessed?

Shock! Horror!

Top businessmen revealed to be Tories! Who would have guessed?

April fool! (2)

April fool!

Bankers

Anent the current fuss about ISAs, see here and here. Basically, the banks lure you into opening an ISA account with the promise of a decent interest rate; subsequently, they quietly - without telling you - reduce the interest rate to peanuts. Further they make it difficult to transfer the money into an alternative better-paying account. They do exactly the same with ordinary savings accounts.

For example, I have a savings account with the Bank of Scotland. I recently discovered that it was earning interest at the princely rate of 0.2% per annum. I have therefore opened a new savings account on much the same terms which pays a more acceptable rate of 2.8%: less than wonderful I admit, but a lot more than 0.2%. In order to open this new account, I had to present my passport and driving licence at the local branch. (I have had an account with the Bank of Scotland for about thirty years - so I would have thought that they knew who I was by now, but hey we all have our bureaucratic crosses to bear.)

The story on ISAs is not much better. My cash ISA with the same bank now earns a meagre 0.2%. If I switch to an alternative cash ISA with slightly diffferent terms I can apparently secure 2.6%. So here goes again. The problem is how long before they reduce interest rates and I have to go through the whole damn procedure again?

That nice Mr Darling should have properly nationalised the bastards.

(Incidentally, do you remember all those Halifax adverts promising a fiver a month if you opened a "reward" account? Well, if so, forget them. Those ads didn't tell you that, in order to get this £5 bonus, you need to pay out £12.50 per month in insurance premia. They're sharks, I tell you. Venal, twisted, greedy sharks.)

Quote of the day

Lucy at The Guardian (here):

Of course, just about anyone can look like a passionate hero if you stand him next to George Osborne, a walking justification for all the schoolyard bullying there ever was, is, or ever shall be. It shouldn't be possible for a stripling of 38 to patronise an adult audience this powerfully. If he reminds us once that government money is our money, taxpayer money, he does it a hundred times. And did you know "We're all in this together"? That's a shock. I was awaiting my Willy Wonka ticket to exempt me from all coming public spending cuts.

I appreciate that I was supposed to revel in the cut and thrust of the economic arguments, but I am afraid I became distracted by the suspicious colour of Osborne's hair: had he been at the Grecian 2000? And why was his jacket buttoned up so tightly?

Once upon a time

Like so many other topics, they will talk about it occasionally but they never seem to get round to actually doing anything. Thus The Observer has a bi-annual bleat about the hour change:

Plans to change the clocks to give another hour of daylight throughout the year are being advanced by Labour and the Conservatives. Both parties believe it would result in reduced energy consumption, fewer accidents and generally improved health.

The paper is also careful to avoid mentioning the real reason for a permanent spring forward, namely to bring us into line with western Europe.

Me, I'm not much fussed either way; but then I don't have to go to school or feed the cows in the dark.

It's not only smoke that gets in your eyes

When I read about this in The Guardian, I simply didn't believe it. But The Telegraph has the same story:

From January 1 next year, any cigarette longer than 8cm – excluding the tip – will be treated as another cigarette and have extra duty slapped imposed on it. For each additional 3cm, or part thereof, it will be treated as yet another cigarette.

Like any other smoker would, I immediately got out a tape measure. Although my fags are longer than usual (Dunhill International you know), the business bit measures slightly less than 7 cm, so phew!

But what a strange way to go about penalising smokers. They must have twisted minds in HMRC.

Sometimes I make things up

Sunday 9 May 2010

How Labour won a 40 seat overall majority (although it was really the Tories that lost it).

Darling's successful and subsequently much-praised budget set the tone for the election campaign. Above all. it restored the faith of Labour MPs and activists that the election was actually winnable. And it was helped by the fact that the following day the Tory lead in the polls had declined to two percentage points (according to The Sun, of all papers).

We should have expected the Tories to panic - and panic they did. By the end of that week the backbenchers were up in arms, somewhat illogically blaming both Coulson and Hilton, as well as the rest of the Cameron clique, for failing to consult the party. After a stand-up shouting match between Coulson and Liam Fox, Cameron felt obliged to let Coulson go. But murmurs of disloyalty persisted, with the total absence of any mention of Europe in the Tory manifesto further stirring the pot.

It was the week after the budget, just before Easter, that Osborne dropped his clanger. In an interview with Newsnight on the Tories' economic plans. he managed to convey the impression that universal welfare benefits, notably child benefit and pensioners' winter fuel allowances, might be withdrawn from the middle classes. It was never entirely clear what Georgie-Porgie meant and, although he subsequently with increasing desperation sought to row back from his gaffe, within hours the clip was up on YouTube and the blogosphere was in a ferment. The press picked up the story and Labour milked it for all it was worth. Labour now had a two point lead in the polls.

It was at this stage that Rupert Murdoch intervened. Never a man to back a loser (and by now the Tories were self-combusting), Rupe ordered The Sun and The Times to switch their allegiance from Tory to Labour.

The final straw was laid on the camel's back during the leaders' TV debate on economic matters. All those years at the Treasury enabled Brown coolly and cruelly to expose Cameron's utter ignorance of matters financial. Worse, the goading and the grinding into the dust caused Cameron to lose his temper; after 40 minutes, red-faced and spluttering, he walked off the set.

After that, it was plain sailing for Labour. They held on to more than enough of their marginal seats, as did also the LibDems, leaving the Tories condemned to the wilderness for another five years.

And the SNP? No net gains, no net losses. Salmond's vision of 20 seats and Westminster dancing to a Scottish jig vanished like snow off a dyke.

Silvio is losing it

I have to admit that politics in this country can be less than exciting (not least when facing yet another First Minister's Questions in the Scottish Parliament). How refreshing, therefore, to see that our Italian confreres know of no bounds when it comes to going over the top. Consider the following exchange, reported in The Independent:

And so the Prime Minister has gone on the offensive. His tirades against a judiciary and a media he believes to be pursuing a personal vendetta against him have the familiarity of a broken record. But eyebrows were raised in Turin on Tuesday night, when he opened both barrels on Mercedes Bresso, the bespectacled, centre-left governor of the northern Piemonte region.

"You know why Bresso is always in a bad mood?" the 73-year-old chortled. "Because in the morning when she gets up, she looks at herself in the mirror to put her make-up on – and sees herself. And so her day is already ruined."

Ms Bresso, 65, hit back immediately at the permatanned leader, who has admitted to succumbing to the plastic surgeon's knife. "I'm always in a good mood. And regarding make up, I don't use much; I don't need it as much as Berlusconi. I'm young, in good shape and haven't had a facelift."

Extraordinary. Impossible to imagine Brown or Salmond saying anything similar to il cavaliere.

(At least, not in public ...)

A budget for marking time

So there you are. Steady as she goes. No boat rocking before 6 May. The odd smartie tossed - somewhat negligently, it should be said - in the direction of those who might put their crosses in the right box. A gentle kick in the goulies of those beyond the pale. Civil servants once again cursed with finding (or not finding) so-called efficiency savings.

But nothing on the biggie, where the serious cuts in 2011 et seq will fall. Trident? Aircraft carriers? Welfare benefits? High speed rail lines? Nor is there anything on the tax increases for the same period, but you can put your shirt on an increase in VAT. All this will be resolved in future budgets and spending reviews.

So full steam ahead for the election. As they say, bring it on!

This is getting silly

Let us, if we must, criticise the Chancellor for what he has done; if his forecasts are over-optimistic, then by all means take him to task. But it seems a trifle excessive to criticise him for the forecasts he might announce later today, when we do not yet know what those forecasts will be. The Independent reports:

The growth forecasts in Alistair Darling's Budget today could prove too optimistic, according to independent research carried out for MPs. The gap means that Labour could fail to achieve its goal to halve the huge deficit in the public finances in four years without raising taxes or making deeper spending cuts than it plans.

In his eve-of-election Budget, the Chancellor is expected to confirm his previous forecast that the economy will grow by 2 per cent in the financial year starting next month.

And so, the expectations of others are nowadays sufficient provocation for condemnation. I might thus expect the Chancellor to double the duty on beer and excoriate him for his wanton negligence of the pleasures of the working man. But building castles in the air rarely provides a secure foundation for the public house of the future. Let us wait and see.

Music of the week

One of the sad things about growing older is that more and more people keep dying on you. This week saw the passing of Lesley Duncan, one of the great unrecognised singer-songwriters of the 1960s and 1970s. I bought the Sing Children Sing LP in 1971 or 1972 and for many years it was one of my most treasured albums; I have it still, scratched and battered as it sits in my bookcase, a minor monument to an obsolete technology. I never met the lady but for so long she was part of my life; if we had met, I'm sure I would have liked her. She seemed more real than the usual pop singers, but I suppose most fans feel the same about their idols. Anyway, here she is:

Unvarnished truth of the week

Tina Fey tells it like it is (from The Independent here) in relation to plastic surgery:

"You've got a simple choice, girls," she said this week. "Either look old or look creepy. That's it."

Too right.

This has put a damper on Friday

I'm not happy. And a lot of other "elderly people" will not be happy. The Scotsman reports:

ELDERLY people may have to pay to use Edinburgh's trams despite previous assurances that the scheme that offers pensioners free bus travel around the country would include the city's flagship new transport project.

Council leaders have admitted they do not yet know whether the £545 million project will become part of the Scottish Government's concessionary fares scheme when the trams are ready to run.

So it's the fault of the First Minister and his chums. Well, they better wake up to who does the voting in this country - it's not generation X or Y, it is we silver seniors; and we'll not take kindly to being asked to pay on the trams.

Some of us manage without a car at all

I saw this headline in The Indie:

For sale: One's very best Daimler
The Queen's personal motor, modified to cater for her handbag and corgies is on the market

and thought: gee, the public spending cuts are going further than I thought they would.

But then I read on:

Buckingham Palace declined to comment on the latest departure from its car pool, which still includes eight state limousines (two Bentleys, three Rolls-Royces and three Daimlers), several Volkswagen people carriers and a London taxi fuelled by LPG (liquefied petroleum gas).

And I thought: Does Her Maj really need all these motors? At most she and the kiltie greek can only use two at a time. But then what's the point of being a monarch if you can't splash out on an extra roller or three ...

Poem of the day

Achilles, by Carol Ann Duffy

Myth's river — where his mother dipped him, fished him, a slippery golden boy flowed on, his name on its lips.
Without him, it was prophesied, they would not take Troy.
Women hid him, concealed him in girls' sarongs; days of sweetmeats, spices, silver songs...
But when Odysseus came, with an athlete's build, a sword and a shield, he followed him to the battlefield, the crowd's roar,
And it was sport, not war, his charmed foot on the ball... But then his heel, his heel, his heel...

(But it doesnae rhyme ...)

Hollowed out

What is shocking about this story is not the imposition of an all-women shortlist nor the selection of a young parliamentary researcher as candidate. It is the fact that the Airdrie and Shotts constituency labour party, as close to labour heartlands as possible, has no more than 160 party members.

The next chancellor?

Slasher Osborne puts on his Mr Angry face:

He's as bad an actor as Tom Cruise. Apart from his Mr Angry face, he has a Mr Happy face; like Tom, the rest of the time he just looks a complete berk ...

SNP - cause to nurse its wrath

Oh dear, Fat Eck will not be pleased. Once again, the SNP plays the role of Cinders, not invited to the ball. The Times reports:

Lord Mandelson is to go head-to-head with Ken Clarke in a live televised battle over the state of British business, as part of a series of debates between the Cabinet candidates from the three main parties.
The BBC will screen nine “Cabinet Contender” debates, in which Labour ministers will take on their Shadow counterparts, as a supplement to the three party leader debates between Gordon Brown, David Cameron and Nick Clegg that will be shown by the BBC, Sky and ITV.

Will anyone watch? Probably not but that's not the point.

Tram wires cross northern skies ...

For those of you obsessed with the introductory music on the current Wallander series, the artiste is Emily Barker, the song is Nostalgia, and the album is Despite the Snow.

Quality television

Nice to see that Shaun the Sheep is back.

Lost in cynicism

Don't you wish that - just for once - the Labour Party would seek to do something because it was the right thing to do? Instead, The Guardian reveals the underlying tactical considerations:

Ministers are working on proposals to transform the House of Lords into a democratically elected second chamber based loosely on the US
Senate.
...
The justice secretary, Jack Straw, will publish his proposals in a draft bill before the election and these will feature prominently in Labour's manifesto. Labour strategists hope that it will create a new dividing line with the Tories, allowing them to portray the Conservatives as being anti-reform.

For if the justification for a proposal is primarily tactical, then why believe that the proposal will be implemented when, after the election, the need for tactical considerations is diminished? Furthermore, the party leaders appear to be blissfully unaware that setting up dividing lines is unlikely to commend the Party to the electorate; they do not even pretend that doing right is a justification in itself.

Vultures

The Tories are still the nasty party. The Independent reports:

A landmark move to protect the world's poorest countries from debt sharks was blocked yesterday by a single Conservative MP during extraordinary scenes in the House of Commons.
"Vulture fund" investment companies buy up defaulted third world debt and sue for immediate repayment. The Debt Relief (Developing Countries) Bill was designed to curb their activities, ensuring that creditors cannot pursue debt repayment beyond the level assessed as fair and sustainable by the World Bank. Liberia lost a £20m lawsuit against two vulture funds in a London court late last year.

Stupid as well as nasty. And the Tories still wonder why they have not "sealed the deal" with the electorate. We will no doubt find out in due course that the MP concerned is in bed with a vulture fund.

Bring back the peseta!

Just when I'm about to spend a month or two in Spain, the pound crashes against the euro:

Source: here

Criminals vote Tory

It can't be easy to write a brief essay on four or five days of the week and keep it entertaining and relevant. Which is why I admire the sketch writers, Treneman for example:

Labour unleashed its attack dogs on the subject of crime yesterday and so I fear this is a “man bites man” story. It has made me realise that we should think about microchipping Alan Johnson. The Home Secretary is dangerous when let loose.
The man that Alan bit was Dave. The occasion was the unveiling of Labour’s latest YouTube effort. As the lights dimmed, the only real dog in the room, a guide dog who is actually named Chip, closed his eyes and began to dream of a world in which dogs kept men on leads.

Well worth reading the whole thing.

Quote of the day

Iain McMillan of the CBI (here):

Iain McMillan, Director of the CBI in Scotland, said he was appalled by the behaviour of the MSPs. He said: “The Scottish Parliament is the seat of democracy. There is a duty on the members of parliament to make every effort to keep the parliament open and to conduct the business they are supposed to do. If they don’t turn up, they risk aiding and abetting this kind of militant behaviour throughout the civil service.”

He's easily appalled then. Since when did an official picket constitute "militant behaviour"? If he cannot keep out of matters in which he has no role to play, he should save his criticisms for the Westminster government which is unilaterally tearing up future redundancy contracts for public servants.

A contrarian writes ...

I was going to post something about the proposal to shut down 6music, but I thought that I should perhaps listen to it for a few days, so that I knew what I was about to condemn.

But now I find that I quite enjoy the station. The music is good and the DJs are not up themselves to the same extent as Chris Evans and Steve Wright (and the execrable Jeremy Vine). So long live radio 6music.

If the BBC needs to save the pennies, it could get rid of the BBC3 tv channel. Programmes such as Snog, marry, avoid and Hotter than my daughter are hardly adornments to the Reithian mission.

Military intelligence is an oxymoron

How novel, how delightful, how deadly:

They are a secret tribal militia, the controversial creation of US commanders in Afghanistan eager to buttress local opposition to the Taliban. So clandestine are the units formed to protect villages in a critical valley in southern Afghanistan that US officials and special forces commanders in Kabul refuse to discuss them.
But the Guardian has learned that in one important regard, the Local Defence Initiative forces are not so secretive after all. As they patrol villages close to the key southern city of Kandahar, the fighters are being forced to wear bright yellow reflector belts so that their special forces mentors do not mistake them for Taliban.

Alternatively, you could paint a target on their chests and get them to carry a sign saying "We are working for the Americans".

Music of the week

How can you not love someone called Vonda?

Over-egging the pudding

The Herald, never knowingly under-panicked, dwells upon the gloomy side:

The Scottish Parliament will be plunged into chaos today as staff go on strike for the first time as part of industrial action involving 270,000 civil and public servants across the UK.

Oh dear, oh dear; chaos is it? The world coming to an end? The country ungoverned?

Maybe not. Parliament doesn't really work on Mondays at the best of times, at least not as far as the MSPs are concerned, so no real chaos there. As for Tuesday:

Staff working in every area of the Scottish Parliament at Holyrood, from security guards to committee clerks, will take part in the strike action. As a result, meetings of the justice and finance committees, usually scheduled for Tuesdays, have been cancelled.

Will anyone outside the hallowed committee rooms notice the resulting chaos? Thought not.

Sportsmen and their hairstyles

1. David James

2. Ryan Sidebottom

3..Bacary Sagna

Cleggy goes over the top

I suppose it's a vote of confidence. The Times reports:

Only early on did the rhetoric threaten to go out of control. He described Tavish Scott, the party’s Scottish leader, a few yards away, as one of the “most dynamic leaders we have had”, an intrepid “Viking” figure, a “whirlwind” figure, a “true people’s politician”. Over the stunned features of Mr Scott, a rich blush spread. He had never heard anything like it.

That makes them both plonkers then ...

An unashamed idiot

This guy is apparently the shadow secretary of state for education. The Times reports:

“I’m an unashamed traditionalist when it comes to the curriculum,” Mr Gove said. “Most parents would rather their children had a traditional education, with children sitting in rows, learning the kings and queens of England, the great works of literature, proper mental arithmetic, algebra by the age of 11, modern foreign languages. That’s the best training of the mind and that’s how children will be able to compete.”

Mr Gove was not born until 1967. Accordingly, he missed the traditionalist education which we children of the 1940s and 1950s suffered. Otherwise, he might have known about the deadening hand of excessive regimentation and the hatred of traditional history and traditional maths fostered by the system of learning by rote. No doubt he eould like to bring back the tawse (although he dare not admit it).

Do the Tories deserve to form the next government? (That's a rhetorical question, by the way.)

Did Chilcot let him off the hook?

Is this clash of views inexplicable? I don't think so. The Guardian reports:

In four hours of testimony shorn of the electricity surrounding Blair's grilling a month ago, he also risked the wrath of military top brass and bereaved families by firmly rejecting criticism that he deprived the armed forces of equipment. "The one fundamental truth", he said, was "that every requirement made to us by military commanders was answered; no request was ever turned down".
Former senior military figures took issue last night with those comments. Admiral Lord Boyce, the chief of the defence staff up to the beginning of the invasion of Iraq in 2003, said that the MoD had been "starved of funds". "He's dissembling, he's being disingenuous. It's just not the case that the Ministry of Defence was given everything it needed," he told The Times.
Colonel Stuart Tootal, a former commander of 3rd Battalion, The Parachute Regiment, said: "I am quite staggered by the lack of any sense of responsibility. He was the man with the purse strings."

The point to bear in mind is that the extra costs attributable to the Iraq war (and subsequently to Afghanistan) were financed from the Contingency Fund and not from the Ministry of Defence's regular financial allocation. Mr Brown and the Treasury may well have approved the extra costs demanded under the former arrangements (although it should also be remembered that military supplies cannot be picked off the trees - additional helicopters and armoured vehicles, even body armour, take time to arrive). At the same time, they kept the regular financial allocation to MoD firmly screwed down. It is thus possible for Mr Brown to argue that "no request [for extra war equipment] was ever turned down", while the military chiefs argue that they were short of resources.

Unfortunately, neither the Chilcot Committee nor the commentators, still less the military top brass, appear to have grasped these distinctions. Was Brown dissembling? Well, he was not entirely frank, let us say. But nobody on Chilcot put him on the spot.

Fairness for all?

MPs to get 1.5% pay rise.

Hey, 1.5% is no big deal. A measly extra £1000 a year. And it's the least we deserve after all. It's not all jolly trips abroad, you know. Apart from our duties in the House, we are at the beck and call of constituents. So apart from the usual skiing week in February and the three weeks in the West Indies in August, it's work, work, work.

And don't tell me about how other public servants will get less or even nothing at all. These are little people motivated solely by envy and, anyway, who cares what a teaching assistant or a dinner lady might think or, even less, what they might receive by way of remuneration. The yobbos of Unison and Unite will complain - let them.

You have to understand: MPs are special; we are different; the rules don't apply to us.

Guilty as charged

When I was a bit younger, record players used to have a facility known as a graphic sound equaliser. I never really understood them and, after some initial twiddling about, ignored them. The same applied to woofers and tweeters.

Today, my washing machine has twelve settings, as well as various options such as 'rinse hold' (which I think I understand). Nevertheless, I only ever use one setting: it makes the clothes clean and does not cause the colours to run from deep colours to my whites. What else does one need from a washing machine?

I dare not buy the modern equivalent of a video recorder - far too complex for a simpleton like me.

But still they complain. The Independent reports:

The nationwide poll of 3,000 people revealed although consumers made the most of their traditional electrics - such as microwaves and washing machines - half the functions on their higher-tech gadgets were left idle.
Expensive new high-definition (HD) TVs proved particularly costly, with nearly half (47%) of those surveyed unaware an HD TV needs to be connected to an HD set-top box to see the benefits. Two per cent even believed you needed to be born with HD Ready eyesight to watch the new format.

Ha ha, very funny, you techie types can be patronising bastards.

Well sorry I bought your stupid machines. Who needs all these fancy functions anyway? And if you didn't make them so complicated, I might understand them.

(Editor: Reading the instructions might help.)

Naturewatch

Spring is sprung, the grass is ris

I wonder where dem boidies is.

They sure ain't feasting on midgies which are perishing by the billions.

Perhaps they are tucking into earthworms and sludge worms (don't ask), mites and ticks as these are apparently plentiful.

Hey, don't ask me, I'm a city lad = pigeons and seagulls form the avian population down my way.