Richard Murphy

The Richard Murphy who signed the letter of my earlier blogpost seems to have a history of idiocy.

Tim Worstall has a whole category on his blog dedicated to it.

Letter to the Guardian

Yesterday I wrote:

having financially intelligent people in Parliament during the middle of a financial crisis would be absurd. Far better to have some "community organisers". They'll sort the mess out.

Entirely unintentionally, I managed to predict a letter to the Guardian yesterday:

A programme of government investment would not only stimulate the wider economy in the short term, but would increase long-term growth, thereby lowering the debt levels through a higher tax take. To this end, we encourage the chancellor to use the forthcoming budget to announce a second fiscal stimulus – especially in housing and transport, where investment has fallen most, and with a focus on developing a low-carbon economy – which would both help to secure economic recovery and create much needed jobs.

This letter was signed by such economic luminaries as:

Alexandra Kemp, Chief Executive, West Norfolk Women and Carers' Pensions Network

Bellavia Ribeiro-Addy, NUS National Officer

Byron Taylor, National Trade Union Liaison Officer, Trade Union & Labour Party Liaison Organisation (TULO)

Cat Smith, Vice Chair, London Young Labour

Clifford Singer, Director, The Other TaxPayers' Alliance

Ellie Gellard, Labour blogger

Jeremy Corbyn MP

Tony Juniper, environmentalist

Will Straw, Editor, Left Foot Forward

I believe in the United States, these people would be known as "community organisers". I've been fairly nice to the signatories; more could have qualified. It would also be nice if the people who actually claim to know anything about the subject matter were from slightly better institutions than this rabble:

Christopher Cramer, Professor of Political Economy of Development, SOAS

Grazia Ietto-Gillies, Emeritus Professor of Applied Economics, Director Centre for International Business Studies, London South Bank University

Prof. George Irvin, Univerity of London, SOAS.

Ismail Erturk, Senior Lecturer in Banking, Manchester Business School

John Ross, Editor, Socialist Economic Bulletin

John Weeks, Professor Emeritus of Economics, SOAS, University of London, and former director of the Centre for Development Policy and Research.

Jonathan Rutherford, Professor of Cultural Studies, Middlesex University

Malcolm Sawyer, Professor of Economics, University of Leeds

Michael Burke, Economist and contributor to Socialist Economic Bulletin

Paul Sagar, New Political Economy Network.

Pat Devine, Honorary Research Fellow, University of Manchester

Prem Sikka, Professor of Accounting, University of Essex

Richard Murphy, Director, Tax Research UK

Robin Murray, Fellow, Young Foundation, Author of Danger and Opportunity:Crisis and the New Social Economy

Susan Himmelweit, Professor of Economics, Faculty of Social Sciences, Open University

No offence to anyone who has been to any of those universities, but they really could have done better than the sole LSE guy on the list.

I feel left out. I feel betrayed that for some strange reason I've never been asked to sign a letter to the Telegraph regarding a subject I know fuck all about along with some washed up no-mark has-beens, some never-will-bes and some people who are just too irrelevant to consider.

Jonathan Freedland

Jonathan Freedland writes in the Guardian:

And it comes apart every time you discover that, for all the new packaging, the Conservatives are the "same old Tories" after all – from the expected 50 Tory MPs in the next parliament to be drawn from the City or the financial services industry all the way to the "no entry" signs on country estates their families have owned for more than 500 years.

Because of course, having financially intelligent people in Parliament during the middle of a financial crisis would be absurd. Far better to have some "community organisers". They'll sort the mess out.

Also, it would be nearly impossible for a modern family to buy a property and hope for their descendants to still be in possession of it 500 years later. Kill inheritance tax.

Finest parliamentarian of his generation

People are talking up Michael Foot as "the finest parliamentarian of his generation", or similar. Michael Foot would never have allowed that. He would only have said such a thing about another distinguished parliamentarian: Enoch Powell, who was born in 1912, the year before Foot.

Foot wrote to him after a speech in 1976, saying:

What a theme, and what a speech, and what a speaker, and how Oliver Cromwell himself would have been thrilled to hear the parliamentary cause elevated to its rightful pre-eminence... Writing as an impenitent Leveller who still begs to differ with you (and Oliver Cromwell) in so many matters, I still cannot withhold my wonder and excitement at what I heard there today.

He also described Powell's failure to become leader of the Conservative party as "a tragedy for Enoch, and a tragedy for the rest of us too".

I admire Ed Balls

I admire and respect Ed Balls. I fail to see how one could not admire and respect Mr Balls. I mean, just take a look at the kind of question he faces week in, week out:

Ann Coffey: More than 3,000 young people in my constituency receive the education maintenance allowance. Without that financial support, many of them could not stay on for further education and skills training after 16. Will my hon. Friend assure me of his continuing commitment to maintaining the education maintenance allowance for low-income families in my constituency?

Only a man of real intellect could answer something as complex as that.

Seriously, though, what is the point of electing someone to ask a question so ridiculously simple that a primary school child could answer it?

Even liberals and socialists

Harry's Place, a blog for and by good liberals and socialists, has a post which concludes:

Here comes the hard part, one that challenges the liberal desire to accept “the other,” one that challenges the desire to embrace multiculturalism which after all has brought so much richness to the West.

Harry’s Place isn’t alone in publishing report after report of radical immigrants to Europe, or the radicalized children of immigrants who haven’t assimilated, who haven’t adopted Western, liberal culture, but who seem to be using democratic means to work against liberal democracy. This has resulted in terrorism in Europe, in segregation; it’s creating stress within communities; there are pockets of poverty and neighborhoods, for example in France, where even the police don’t go.

There are examples aplenty of politicians seeking election who, at worst, like Galloway, exploit Muslim communities and themselves have adopted the Hamas platform; at best one sees Labour politicians eager for votes apparently signaling their acceptance of certain aspects of anti-liberal culture. Media, even the formerly liberal/left Guardian, seem to have become platforms for the most radical interpretations of anti-Western, anti-American and anti-Semitic writers.

The impact on women’s rights alone could be significant. Freedom of speech is challenged even within the university.

Art is challenged. People have been murdered or threatened with death for making films, writing novels, for drawing cartoons.

It’s impossible not to see this attack on art alone, on creativity, as a real threat to sacred pillars of Western civilization– the right to create, the right to stand up to religious hierarchy, the right to be secular, even the right to be outrageous. Stifling those rights represent real threats to Western and post-Enlightenment values that we hold dear.

So, I hate to admit it but my feelings about Geert Wilders are becoming more mixed than I would wish.

I do think there is a real danger of an anti-Muslim backlash, that anti-Muslim, anti-Islam propaganda can be as dangerous as anti-Semitism. I think there’s a big danger of neo-fascism emerging as a powerful element of Western politics, not only in Europe but possibly in America as well.

But, I also think that certain cultural aspects coming from Africa, the Middle East and Asia are antithetical to Western culture.

How do we reassert our cultural and political values without crossing the line into bigotry and xenophobia?

When even liberals and socialists will agree with Mr Wilders' ideas of banning immigration from Muslim countries, it says a lot about the political establishment and liberal media that nobody would dare suggest a thing here. To the ruling classes, the idea of asserting your own culture is completely alien.

The nations of Europe are starting to assert their culture again. The British liberal ruling classes won't get it for 40 years, if ever. We need another Glorious Revolution. We also need a new Royal Family. More on that tomorrow.

Party before country

Sunder Katwala of the Fabian Society says:

The charge of "putting party before country" has been a potent one, at least since Winston Churchill found an unusual vehicle to launch a political attack through a book index entry, "Baldwin, Stanley ... confesses putting party before country, 169-70.

But has the charge ever fitted anybody so well as the astounding Lord Ashcroft?

I'm not sure how he could possibly ask that question. Gordon Brown is responsible for borrowing such a great deal of money that this country will have to endure years of hardship before emerging back onto the world stage. Why did he do this? He didn't want to impose "cuts" on public services. Why did he not want to do that? Because it would have lost him votes.

That's a far greater example of someone putting party before country.

Another is Nick Clegg, who I believe will attempt to form a coalition government with Mr Brown, thus undemocratically imposing more Labour rule, and for what purpose? In order to bring about electoral reform so that his own party can gain more representation in the House of Commons, and thus stand more of a chance of being in a position to selfishly decide who the British people may or may not have as their government. How is that not putting party before country?

Mr Katwala ought to look objectively at what is going on, instead of through a narrow socialist-exceptionalist viewpoint.

Somalian President

They do get some odd people writing for them, though, the Guardian. Yesterday, they got the "President" of some version of Somalia. He says:

There is nothing Somali about the violence afflicting our country. The extremists are waging war against our Somali flag, our Somali values and our religion.

Death penalty

Another one from the backlog of things to write. Jeremy Rowe, who seems to be a Liberal Democrat member of Cornwall County Council, blogged in December last year:

The bottom line for me is that it is wrong to kill people, unless it is the only way to stop them killing others. The death penalty belongs to another age, an age when people took the Old Testament literally, when trial by drowning was an acceptable method of dealing with witchcraft. It is not something that should have a place in a modern society.

This type of attack against the death penalty is not very clever. It's also extremely elitist.

The death penalty was in place until 1965, and permanently abolished in 1969. There were obviously no trials for witchcraft, or anything else Councillor Rowe wishes to claim. These years were, in virtually every imaginable respect, far more civilised than 2005 and 2009. His attack has no merit. I wish the anti-death penalty lobby would make a decent case, because I rarely see one. That's probably why every major survey on this issue has found that the majority of the population wishes to see the return of the death penalty. The sooner we take this country back from the leftist elite that whinges about the human rights of the criminal, and the injustices of the legal system, the better we will all be.

Serial killer loving

I wasn't aware a newspaper could sink so low as to publish serial killer-loving opinion pieces. It's the Observer. Regarding the cases of the "Yorkshire Ripper", and Jamie Bulger's killer:

The worst possible outcome of the present revival of these two criminals would be that people might seek vengeance, even perhaps targeting the wrong victim. But, even if they got the right target, it would be a huge blow to society.

Liberal Democrat split

Peter Oborne writes:

Clegg has discovered (rather to his personal dismay) that most of his party regard any kind of agreement with the Conservatives with disgust.

This feeling is so overwhelming that Clegg fears that a Lib/Tory pact might actually split his party.

The Liberal Democrats are irrelevant to begin with, but as I have said regularly, they are composed of two factions, one to the left of Labour, and one economically to the right of Thatcher. They must break up at some point; Mr Clegg knows this, but evidently he doesn't have the courage to stand up for what he really believes in: economic liberalism and the free market. Instead he presents neutral policies that can't offend either wing.

"Once a bastion of tolerance"

It doesn't surprise me that whichever third-rate journalist wrote this in the Mail:

The Freedom Party (PVV), which chiefly campaigns against Muslim immigration, has dented the image of the Netherlands, which was once considered a bastion of tolerance.

Refused to put their name to it. Instead, it was written by "DAILY MAIL REPORTER".

The Freedom Party is a liberal conservative party. It is also unquestionably the case that where Islam grows, freedom dies - Mr Wilders, their leader, is currently being tried for "criticising Islam". I don't think any serious person needs more reason to suspect unforgivable intolerance than when somebody is being tried in a court of law for criticising an idea.

Geert Wilders

Ed West may have it just about right here:

The Kingdom of England is in a parlous state. Ruled by a rotten Scottish tyranny, the nation groans under the weight of oppressive, unconstitutional laws, the ruling elite is in the pay of its absolutist masters on the continent, and many Englishmen suspect their government is promoting an oppressive and reactionary religion against the will of the people.

The nation’s only hope is a charismatic young Dutchman fighting almost single-handedly against the creation of a united Europe under the rule of an unelected tyrant in Holland’s southern neighbour.

Conservative trade unionists

I tend to build up a backlog of things I mean to write, or links I mean to post. Here's one from last month. It's written for "ConservativeHome" by Neil Pearce, who I helped narrowly lose in a by-election in Newham last year. It's titled:

Why I, as a Conservative trade unionist, believe the unions should cut their links with Labour

It's a decent read.

Can theatre beat the BNP?

Guardian:

Can theatre beat the BNP?

A question to which the answer is "no". It also requires a response; "OF COURSE NOT!", and some laughter.

The aforementioned question is the title of a blogpost on the Guardian's website, the text of which contains:

But can these productions really further the debate around racism, or is this merely the liberal middle-class arts community trying to make itself feel current and politically engaged?

The latter part of that is a question to which the answer is a massive, obvious "yes".

Banning men

More news from abroad:

Gaza’s Islamic Hamas government on Thursday banned men from working in women’s hair salons, the latest step in its campaign to impose strict Islamic customs on Gaza’s 1.5 million people.

Presumably Jeremy Corbyn et al are happy with this clearly socialist measure.

Zimbabwean relations

I'm delighted we have this endorsement:

Zimbabwe's President Robert Mugabe Thursday said his country would have better relations with London if the Conservatives win the next elections.

"We have always related better with the British through the Conservatives than Labour," Mugabe told journalists.

"Conservatives are bold, (Tony) Blair and (Gordon) Brown run away when they see me, but not these fools, they know how to relate to others," he added.

Mugabe's rant comes after Prime Minister Gordon Brown told South Africa's Jacob Zuma in London that Zimbabwe's targeted sanctions would not be lifted until progress was seen in the power-sharing government.

Zuma, who is the mediator in Zimbabwe's fragile unity accord, wants the sanctions lifted.

"We have a better chance with (British Conservative leader) David Cameron than with Brown," said Mugabe.

The Falklands: a solution

The one thing that could put the Falklands sovereignty debate beyond question would be to create a fifth nation of the United Kingdom - incorporate the Falklands into the UK.

The creation of a fifth constituent country of the United Kingdom has only ever been considered once, for Malta.

If this were to happen, any Argentinian attempts to claim sovereignty over the islands would be treated just the same as them trying to claim Bavaria from the Germans.

Why have you signed this?

Early Day Motion 891, from last month, states:

That this House is concerned that the small number of remaining Jews living in Yemen are facing ongoing religious persecution and systematic mistreatment which represents a critical threat to the health, safety and security of their community; notes that the United States administration has facilitated the resettlement of Yemeni Jews in the US for those with ties to that country; and urges the Government to follow this example and consider providing specific measures for those members of the group with ties to the UK who urgently need protection on humanitarian grounds.

Two of the signatories are John McDonnell and Jeremy Corbyn, both very active in the "Palestinian solidarity" movement, and, at least in the case of the latter, support Hamas, and many front organisations for anti-Semitic, homophobic death-cults. Their claims to care for the welfare of Jewish people in danger abroad is worthless - they endanger Jewish people in this country, and others, by providing legitimacy to fascist movements like Hamas.

Pro-EU

James Delingpole writes on his blog:

contrary to the rumours cunningly put about by Tory Central Office – he is instinctively pro-EU

I understand why people might think this, but I disagree.

Daniel Hannan wrote last year:

People sometimes ask what makes David Cameron a Conservative. If you spent a few days in the place which shaped him, you wouldn’t need to put the question. This is a bit of England that in some ways seems to me more real, because more permanent, than those bits sometimes held up as “gritty reality”. How to describe such communities? Decent, determined and discrete; sturdy, stable and self-sufficient; prosperous, peaceable and patriotic. People here love their country, and are quick to volunteer to serve it, but generally distrust its officials. They pay their taxes meticulously, while quietly regretting their level. They devote themselves to charity, and are hard-headed about what constitutes a deserving case. They love the natural world, but have little time for bossy global eco-technocracies.

That's the main reason why I believe he isn't "secretly pro-EU" etc.

However, he is far too pragmatic for his own good. He won't leave the EU because it would be disruptive for months to do so, and damage relations with some heads of state. But he doesn't see this as a necessary period of discomfort, he sees it as too disruptive to consider. Annoying, but not an ideological commitment to the EU.

Hard right

Jon Cruddas and Jonathan Rutherford:

His compassionate Conservatism detoxified the Tory brand, but it is opposed by a free-market hinterland of hard right prospective parliamentary candidates amongst others.

Oh, come on. I wish a question was being asked here, because it would be a straight "no". I can think of only one "hard right" candidate, and he's in an unwinnable seat.

Lost catastrophically

Tom Harris MP:

The Conservatives lost catastrophically for a reason, or for many reasons.

This is relating to the 1997 election. You know, the one where we got more popular votes than the current government at the last (and next) election.

Polls

The polls show very little - which is why I rarely take notice, and very rarely comment on them. True, today's poll has annoyed me, but it's a general feeling that we ought to be get a much higher percentage, because core Labour voters ought to be switching, as they did in 1979 etc.

But anyway, the polls don't matter. Closing the gap to 2% could just mean that the Labour heartlands are now deciding they will vote Labour after all. It may have no effect on the marginals, which is where everything matters.

Good speeches

James Forsyth of the Spectator writes:

The mood in the bars of Brighton is grim: the Tory lead is down to two points in the latest poll. (As UK polling Report notes, any individual poll should be treated with caution) The poll is, obviously, bad news for the Tories. But it does set the stage for David Cameron’s speech tomorrow. Cameron will deliver the speech without notes and from past experience we know that when he does that he tends to deliver a very good speech—see the 2005 and 2007 conferences for examples. If Cameron can emphasise to the country why it shouldn’t want five more years of Gordon Brown and how the Tories will change things, then the materials will be in place for a fight-back narrative.

This is such nonsense. Most people don't give a damn what he will or will not say tomorrow - people decide quickly who they do and do not like, they have their prejudices, and their beliefs, and, on the whole, stick to them. Mr Cameron giving a good speech may dominate Sky News for a while, but people will turn off, not listen or watch it, according to their particular pre-determined views. There are very few people, unfortunately, who decide to investigate whether they should vote for someone, and what their policies are.

The polls

The Sunday Times has a poll which gives the Tories a 2% lead over Labour.

Coincidentally, Ed West wrote yesterday:

If William Hague was leader, the Tories would be way ahead in the polls

He says:

And yet one would have thought that the finest PR minds in Christendom might have been able to forge some sort of message out of 13 years of reckless spending, failed social engineering, welfare expansion and uncontrolled immigration, all in the most spied-on society outside North Korea. Instead we’re on course for a draw. David Cameron and George Osborne have a serious image problem if the British public are even considering the thought of reelecting McDoom, Mandelson, Balls and Harperson for another five years. Gary Glitter could probably win a popularity contest with that gang – so why can’t the Tory leadership?

It is simply unbelievable that an Opposition party can fail to overcome this government. I can't think of one as unpopular as this.

As Ed thinks, and as I have said before, William Hague ought to be leader.

One thing's for sure: if Mr Cameron cannot improve the polling by the time of the election, he will be ejected quickly from the leadership. It will be interesting to see whether he tries to hang on as leader, though.

It could also lead to the dissolution of the Conservative party - one of the reasons Mr Cameron is doing so poorly is that many, many people would rather stay at home than vote for him, or vote BNP - they hate Labour, but, thanks to Mrs Thatcher's actions, they won't vote for us, ever. If we were to scrap the party, as Peter Hitchens wants, and we presented people with a proper conservative party, with existing Tory MPs, thus giving us a parliamentary starting point, we'd probably be hitting 60% in the polls at the moment.

Change

Early Day Motion 1754 from October 2002 states:

That this House agrees that the first-past-the-post electoral system is the most appropriate for electing honourable Members of Parliament.

It's signed by, amongst many others, Tom Watson and Jon Cruddas.

Yet:

Alternative Vote: Why we should change the First Past the Post voting system

From Tom Watson's blog last Summer.

And:

A grown-up Labour party needs to embrace proportional representation

That's what Jon Cruddas wrote in the Guardian in March last year.

I always wonder how people can change their minds about things like this.

Rightward Drift

More enemy within stuff from a Conservative candidate:

So the British version of the ‘Tea Party’ movement was apparently launched in Brighton today. Seemingly, most of that delightful seaside resort responded with indifference at this apparently ‘historic’ event. Personally, I’m pretty alarmed that the most crankish part of an increasingly crankish Republican Party (see my post here about the rightward drift of an already right wing GOP) seems to want to replicate itself over here. The last thing we need is a British version of the tea party movement.

Because it's totally ghastly for a political party to be right-wing, yah? I often wonder whether he is aware he is a candidate for a supposedly right-wing party.

Mass immigration

Silly Guardian news story:

Tories caught up in new immigration storm

Conservative leader and home affairs spokesman appear on leaflet saying 'floodgates' have been opened to immigrants

The guy accusing the Tories of "dog-whistle politics" is Phil Woolas. However, Phil said earlier this week, in relation to immigration:

My own family, my children, have suffered from that and we recognise that point...

And yet, it's wrong to imply mass immigration is bad?

For Christ's sake, even Polly Toynbee gets it:

Controlling the borders is a first duty of government. Sudden and unexpected immigration has abruptly changed the nature of some communities and there is no point pretending it can or will be reversed. With a backlog of 250,000 asylum cases and more building up, the UK Borders Agency can still only process less than half its target applications a month. Even then, sending back failed asylum seekers is often impossible. Applications are slowing – but they ebb and flow with wars, since only extreme conditions eject people from their homelands.

How out of touch can they get?

Elected House of Lords

An elected House of Lords sounds nice, if you're in favour of as much democracy as possible.

But how many Lords would there be?

Less or more than the number of MPs?

The general idea is less.

Therefore, each Lord would receive more votes than each MP, as each Senator receives more votes than each Representative.

So who then has the larger mandate to legislate?

The Lords.

So by electing the Lords, you turn the scrutinising body into one that seems like it ought to legislate.

Then what?

Downward-scrutiny?

More likely, the next step would be to simply merge the two chambers, and there, you lose the scrutinising body.

The power of the executive becomes terrifying.

New progressive era

Peter Hain, same piece:

The stakes are very high. If we recognise our common ground, a new progressive era of political reform based on Britain's natural anti-Tory majority can take charge.

This simply isn't credible. You can't hope to build a "new progressive era" with the same people who have ruled us for 13 years. If every single Labour MP was retiring, if every single civil servant was sacked, and the party changed its name, it could just about try and do something of this nature, but it's hard to see how people would trust such a "new era" to be a "new era" otherwise.

Preaching to the converted

Peter Hain writes:

Today, whatever dissatisfaction there may be with our government after 13 years in office, it is becoming clear that people do not trust David Cameron's Tories. Beneath the slick spin, nobody knows what they really stand for, and many suspect they are still the old "nasty party" after all.

If people in general thought this, why does Hain write this for the Guardian? He is preaching to the converted. Why not write this in the non-Tory Times, or the non-Tory Telegraph?

Fringe

Tenth-rate New Statesman "journalist" James Macintyre, writes:

allying with fringe far-right parties in Europe

Fringe? Well, these fringe parties form the governments of Poland and the Czech Republic, a combined population of nearly 50 million, and, if they were one country, the fifth-largest in the EU.

Real fringe, there, James.

Seumas Milne

Guardian Islamist Seumas Milne writes:

As long as British governments back wars and occupations in the Middle East and Muslim world, there will continue to be a risk of violence in Britain. But attempts to drive British Muslims out of normal political activity, and the refusal to confront anti-Muslim hatred, can only ratchet up the danger and threaten us all.

Right. And why should we put up with this? What happened when we were in the Middle East 150 years ago? Did "British Muslims" "threaten us all"? Was there "a risk of violence in Britain"? No? Why? Because no "British Muslims" were here?

Why do we put up with it?

Falkland Islands, part 3

I'm very surprised that the Guardian hasn't indulged in that much Falklands-hatred in the past, although I've found a number of examples. Here's Richard Gott:

The Falklands belong to Argentina. They just happen to have been seized, occupied, populated and defended by Britain.

Contrast that with the nutjobs who write about Israel far too often to be considered normal.

Falkland Islands, part 2

Someone writes for the Guardian:

Is it not time for Britain to stop behaving like a 19th-century colonial power and heed the call of the United Nations to discuss the question of sovereignty with Argentina?

Well, come to think of it, that's a question to which the answer is "no". Not ever.

My original point was going to be: ever heard of self-determination?

My blog yesterday featured a bit of a discussion I had with some bloke who thought we should give the Falklands back. I don't know whether they got to it through my blog, or whether they got to it in another way, but anyway, two commenters who appear to be Falklanders say:

Its always interesting to find the people who write this stuff in defence of Argentina or want to give the Falkland Islands to them don’t live on the Falkland Islands. My family have for generations, with my ancestors being English, Scottish and Irish not Argentinian.

I wonder if someone who lived across the road tried to claim ownership to your house if you would just let them take it. Based on your arguement proximity equals ownership.

As for oil I don’t think you will find many real Islanders who are enthusiastic about it being here, we just want to live in peace something our neighbours will not allow. Maybe we should get them an ASBO!

And:

umm just to make this personal, my family have been in the Falkland Islands since the 1850s. There was NEVER a native population, thus it was my family and all the other families that settled and developed this little place, against some pretty difficult odds, and unlike other countries (Argentina included) we did not remove a native population to whom the country originally belonged. Its disturbing to hear some of you wisely pontificating about the only place myself and my ancestors have ever called home. Incidentally there were a number of settlements in the Falklands ‘in the beginning’ one of which was French… The Spanish and British had a few little spats over a number of years, and the one that ‘hung in there’ was the Brits – why I don’t know, but that’s a fact.

Why I wonder do a number of you feel that just because we are a small population we do not have the ‘right to self determination’ as stated in the United Nations charter.

I should also add that another invasion is most unlikely. It is in Argentina’s Constitution to pursue the sovereignty of the Falklands by peaceful means. It is in our Constitution that we claim the right to self determination. It is Britain that currently supports us in giving us the Government of our choice. Falkland Islanders see the Falklands as belonging to them… we need Britain to protect our rights and we do all we can not to be a drain on Britain. With oil, perhaps we can be an asset. Whatever happens we may be few but we have the same rights as each and every one of you.

Falkland Islands

I am not as sad that the United States - or rather, the deeply unpopular Mr Obama - have decided they won't support Britain against Argentina in the new "dispute" about the sovereignty of the Falkland Islands as Nile Gardiner is, because they have always been neutral - Reagan was too.

What I would say is that it was insensitive to state a position of neutrality at a time when we are in a war together.

This is also probably the first situation in which I would like the EU to do something. They support the right of the Falkland Islanders to be ruled by Britain - it's specifically mentioned in the Lisbon Treaty. The EU ought to get involved. However, Spain, a member of the EU, supports Argentina. If "we", a political union, cannot even agree on "our" borders, why do "we" deserve the right to exist? It shows that the EU is a silly entity, if members of it are traditional enemies, and will oppose, for the sake of it, the territorial rights of other member states.

Hugo Chavez has now decided to imply he would go to war with us, if Argentina declared one. At this stage, Gordon Brown ought to make a very specific speech or release a statement to the press, promising a policy of massive retaliation. Make it perfectly clear to Argentina, and any other clowns wishing to get involved, that any attack on the Falklands will be treated no differently to an attack on Birmingham, London or Manchester. It will result in heavy bombing of non-civilian targets in Buenos Aires and any other areas of importance to countries involved. If they still wish to go ahead with their vote-winning war strategy, that's too bad.

I see some chump from Blackpool has written a blogpost on this issue:

What the hell are we doing messing about with them for?

Does anyone feel the same as me that we’re being a bit of a bully?

The islands have had a very chequered history as far as sovereignty goes but blimey…..I’m sure if Argentina pulled a big oil exploration rig over to the Isle of Man and started drilling holes willy nilly we’d have plenty to say. Our days of Empire building are over…and I really don’t care that we have had a population there since 1833…it’s off their coast…it should be theirs!

Christ have we not lost enough lives over oil already. We will get by without it, Gordon!

….and yes, I am sorry that we lost so many lives in the Falklands War…but I was against that too!

It’s not right…and you won’t be able to convince me otherwise.

I commented on that blog as "Martin" (as yet unpublished):

Why bother writing this if you are already convinced?

It seems to me that any person with a vague understanding of liberty and self-determination would be fully behind Britain here: Falkland Islanders feel just as British as the Queen, and consider themselves as much a part of Britain as Kent or Lancashire.

The only real question here is what gives you the right to decide whether British people should be ruled by foreign countries?

This has nothing to do with “Empire” – the Falkland Islanders are hardly being colonised or subjected or oppressed – which they would be, funnily enough, if the Argentinians invaded them. It also has nothing to do with oil – it is Argentina who have become interested in the islands due to oil, not the British. Thus, you should be attacking the oil-hungry Argentinians for wanting to provoke a war over oil.

Attack Mrs Cameron

From the Telegraph:

“Briefing against her has already begun,” discloses my man in Gordon Brown’s bunker.

Astonishingly, Labour officials claim that David Cameron’s wife, who transformed the fortunes of the Mayfair stationer Smythson while raising three children, is “lazy”.

The plan is to compare Mrs Cameron, 38, unflatteringly with Sarah Brown, 46.

“Much will be made of Sarah’s charity work and journalists will be encouraged to make comparisons with the amount of work that Mrs Cameron does for charity,” says my mole.

I find this a predictable and unoriginal, but nonetheless disappointing, line of attack, if the story is true.

There are a number of reasons why this line is bound to fail, however.

1. Mr Brown is in the middle of a bullying scandal - attacking a family member of someone the public consider to be basically a nice guy is hardly a good strategy
2. It's a year to the day that Mrs Cameron's son died. I don't believe people will have forgotten that she was caring full-time for a severely disabled child for years. People won't agree that this makes her "lazy"
3. Charity events are usually organised by people and organisations in the entertainment/arts industry - almost entirely liberal, and thus hardly likely to want Mrs Cameron doing work for their charity
4. The "wife of the Prime Minister" sounds a-political, and generally nice. Compare this to "wife of the leader of the Conservative party" - that not only sounds political, and thus risks alienating people involved with a charity, but also could be interpreted as some kind of endorsement

For those reasons, which any serious person would recognise at least some of, I don't think this strategy would be successful.

Graham Brady

Forget the surveys about their ideas and all that, the first real test of how the Conservative "class of 2010" think will be the election for the chairmanship of the 1922 Committee.

If they don't elect Graham Brady, a grammar-school supporter who resigned from Mr Cameron's front bench on the schools issue, they will show themselves to be out of touch with their grassroots, and thus not proper representatives of us, and unfit to legislate on our behalf.

Rudi Dutschke

There are some more current things to write about, which I'll catch up on over the coming days, but I thought I'd use today's blogpost to point out an obscure figure who should serve as a warning to this generation and future ones.

Rudi Dutschke (March 7, 1940 - December 24, 1979) was a leader of the German student movement in the 1960s. He followed the ideas of Antonio Gramsci and the Frankfurt school of Cultural Marxism.

Satya magazine had a feature about the Baader-Meinhof gang in 2004, which said this of Dutschke:

After the rally, thousands of angry, frustrated students converged at the Berlin offices of the Socialist German Student Union, which was the leading student organization at the time. Gudrun Ensslin, a young woman with an intense demeanor, screamed to the crowd, “This fascist state means to kill us all! We must organize resistance. Violence is the only way to answer violence. This is the Auschwitz Generation, and there’s no arguing with them!” The leader of the Student Union, firebrand organizer “Red” Rudi Dutschke, was sympathetic to Ensslin’s goals but proposed decidedly different tactics to achieve them. Instead of violence, he advocated for “a long march through the institutions” of power, to create radical change from within government and society by becoming an integral part of the machinery.

Students of modern German history know how these twin philosophies played out over the coming decades. Ensslin helped to form the Red Army Faction, popularly know as the “Baader-Meinhof Gang”. During the next decade Ensslin, intent on bringing a form of Socialist Revolution to Germany, and the 50 or so young Germans who joined her and her boyfriend Andreas Baader, left a trail of destruction through Germany unmatched since the Soviet Army paid a visit in 1945. They blew up buildings and killed American soldiers. They killed the leading justice on the West German Supreme Court. They kidnapped and later murdered Germany’s most noted industrialist, a man who roughly occupied the place Bill Gates holds in the U.S. today. They helped highjack a Lufthansa jet. They blew up the German embassy in Stockholm.

A whole other generation of young Germans chose to take up Rudi Dutschke’s call to action instead. They would be instrumental in the rise of Greenpeace and environmental consciousness in Germany, and would go on to found the progressive Green Party in 1979. Twenty years later the Green Party would be sharing control of the German government.

And:

So how did it come to be that one of America’s most powerful allies and one of the world’s leading democracies chose to suffer the wrath of America by staying out of the war? Because a generation of people chose to heed Rudi Dutschke’s call three decades ago. They became civil servants. They got elected to local offices. They became involved in socially progressive causes. They founded and guided the Green Party into becoming a true force in German politics, eventually putting the party in the position to share power with the SPD (Germany’s equivalent of the Democrats) in a coalition government. They took positions of power in the upper echelons of German government, like Joshka Fischer, who became Germany’s Foreign Minister (the equivalent of Colin Powell). And when the opportunity came for a bold choice to stand up to oppressive American pressure to support the coming war, Germany’s government was well represented with members of Rudi Dutschke’s generation, ready to fulfill his legacy, and take a strong stand on behalf of social justice and against unjust aggression.

Finally:

Rudi Dutschke, a brilliant Berlin student leader, advocated a “long march through the institutions.” He proposed a decades-long Revolution by entering the systems of power, working into positions of leadership, and effecting peaceful, gradual change from within. His arguments held considerable sway, inspiring many young Germans to begin their own long marches. Joschke Fisher, Germany’s extraordinarily popular current Foreign Minister, and so instrumental in the German decision to oppose the 2003 American war in Iraq, was the most noted of hundreds of former radicals who deferred their immediate goals and steadily marched into the upper echelons of the German power structure.

This has happened in this country. See Peter Mandelson, Charles Clarke, Bob Ainsworth for equivalent examples.

Dutschke was shot in the head in 1968, but survived. In 1969 he moved to this country to go to Cambridge University, but was deported by Heath's government in 1971. In the debate on this issue, then-Home Secretary, Reginald Maudling said:

my decision in this case was taken both in the interests of national security and on grounds of a political nature

As I say, a warning for politics today: the Green party is merely a vessel for communists to impose their beliefs on us, while seeming friendly and caring. They are watermelons. As for the long march of the institutions, it would take someone really radical to change that, and I doubt that that someone is Mr Cameron, seeing as he's a product of the cultural revolution that this long march created.

Silly Duke

Read this:

The Duke, 65, has said he would be happy to be known simply as Peregrine Cavendish, ending three centuries of history and tradition.

He said: “The aristocracy is not dying, it’s dead! Coffin’s nailed down, it’s in the ground. It doesn’t exist, except that people have titles.”

The Duke inherited his title six years ago on the death of his father and lives at the family seat of Chatsworth House in Derbyshire. However, he did consider not accepting the peerage.

"But I thought it might have been disrespectful to Chatsworth," he said in an interview with the Sunday Times Magazine.

He now insists he would be prepared to give it up if Labour wins the next election and ploughs ahead with plans to end hereditary peerages.

"Because then it would be clear-cut what the people wanted, and it would be confusing to maintain hereditary titles. So, finish that, go back to being called Cavendish," he said.

“Look, I’m only here by pure chance, I haven’t earned any of this … And it would be so easy to drop it, too: Just the stroke of a pen, or not even that — just a new passport.”

Jesus. So if Labour win, that means a majority of the population wants to abolish titles in general? How stupid is this guy? You'd think Eton and Oxford would leave someone a little better informed than this. The percentage of the population who voted Labour in 2005 is, from memory, around 20%. If they had been asked what their reasons for voting were, I somehow doubt the outright abolition of the aristocracy would have been within the top 5. I would guess as few as 2% of Labour voters voted primarily for that reason. So that's down to a minute number of people, and the number will be even lower in this coming election, mostly because far fewer people will vote Labour in general, and also because it's hardly a pressing issue against the backdrop of the failed economy etc.

Therefore, it would not be clear that that was "what the people wanted" at all. He ought to read the news a bit more or something.