Iraq - The Truth?

I have long held the view - and expressed it to anyone who would listen that all politicians are as bad as we allow them to be. Fundamentally, there is little difference in the mentalities of Joseph Stalin, Adolf Hitler, Margaret Thatcher, Tony Blair and many another who attained the top job in their country's politics. What is different is what they are allowed to get away with. In any political system there are constraints on the powers of the chief executive - Parliament [in all its forms], party controls, elections, a free press, etc - but if those constraints are allowed to wither and die the result is dictatorship and once the great leader is attacked by paranoia anything can happen. Very few leaders want open government; it restricts them too much.

The first defence of freedom is Parliament. In recent years Parliament in the UK has lost its authority and allowed itself to be down-graded. Particularly this has happened during the time of Tony Blair's premiership. One of the consequences has been a catalogue of disasters almost unparalleled in British history. At the head of the list are our involvements in the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq. We are now leaving Iraq having achieved little and with the reputations of our country and our military badly damaged. We have had a number of enquiries about Iraq - all with severe restrictions on what they were allowed to investigate. Now there is to be yet another enquiry. Initially, Gordon Brown told us that this full and final enquiry would be held in private with no-one questioned on oath, no attempt made to apportion blame and no publication of the final report until it had been censored - redacted? We understand that Gordon Brown came up with this wizard wheeze following lobbying by Tony Blair. Well, he would, wouldn't he? How, in the name of God, can we have a proper full enquiry if it is all held in secret, with no sworn statements, no blame and a final attack of marker-pen censorship? Only a man with the mentality of a leader like Tony Blair could come up with this nonsense, believe it and expect to get away with it. Well, Blair's sofa government is no more and the enquiry should be full and open, in public with sworn witnesses, with blame apportioned and an uncensored publication. I do not know what was agreed by Blair with Bush. I do not know if we really were committed to war long before the matter was debated in parliament. I do not know if we authorised torture and if Blair knew about it. These questions must be answered and the people responsible held to account. There was always a massive majority against our invasion of Iraq and our support of the Americans was based on a "sexed up" report, complaints about the reporting of which lead to the resignations of the chairman and director general of the BBC.

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Meanwhile, we have no enquiry about Afghanistan; a war zone in which our troops are asked to fight without any real, meaningful programme of objectives. In June 2006, we sent extra troops to Afghanistan to be deployed in Helmand and the erstwhile defence secretary, John Reid, said that "we hoped we will leave Afghanistan without firing a single shot." Three years later we are still there and in spite of Mr Reid's ill-advised, stupid assertion, men are being killed week after week in order to sustain a corrupt regime. What is parliament doing to bring to an end this ill-fated excursion? How much are we prepared to allow the Executive to get away with?

Redaction

It is a truism that it is always opposition parties in Parliament that favour freedom of information. It is only in government that politicians realise just how undesirable freedom of information really is. The present Minister of Justice, Jack Straw, was a persuasive advocate of the case for freedom of information, until, after the Labour victory in 1997, he became Home Secretary. He was committed to bringing in a Freedom of Information Act but he wrestled with the details for some years before introducing legislation with many a loop-hole and limitation. In spite of the restrictions the act has forced government - both national and local - to reveal much about their deliberations, the waste and the cock-ups. Since the act came into force in 2000, the government has, with the connivance of parliament, sought repeatedly to restrict still further the availability of information - on the basis of various spurious arguments. But most depressing has been the Speaker and MPs themselves seeking to make the act completely inapplicable to them. This has been a cross-party conspiracy to suppress all details of their expenses, their movements and their extra-curricular activities.

Having lost that battle, MPs have this week allowed officers of parliament to published on-line the "full" details of MPs expenses. This extra-ordinary collection of documents has been subjected to a process of "redaction". Until yesterday, I had never even heard of this word. What is redaction? An Internet search tells me that it is a process that involves blacking out potentially sensitive information so that documents can be made available to a wider audience [the public]. Alternative words with the same meaning are sanitisation and censorship. It is the default condition for politicians. Do not reveal anything if it can be kept secret. The absurdity of this week's publication of redacted documents is that publication seeks to conceal that which is already known. However, if these documents had been published without the information made available to us by the Daily Telegraph over the last 3 weeks, MPs would have succeeded in hiding vital facts about second homes, avoided taxes and miscellaneous expenditure on the home terraced house or the stately pile, etc. It would have concealed. Publication would have hidden also many a fact of no significance whatsoever and in so doing made the public convinced that all MPs were crooks. They are not.

There is nothing more revealing of the policies of dictators than national newspapers that appear with huge areas left blank - removed by censors. Is it now to become a feature of life in Britain? It is symptomatic of the breakdown in the relationship between the UK parliament and the people that MPs have allowed £1.2 m of our money to be spent on censoring documents in order to achieve nothing other than a lowering even further of the public's opinion of the morals and competence of our MPs.

And now I need to remember the meaning of redaction

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Clement Attlee

Frank Field, the rebel Labour MP, has just published an edited collection of essays written by the former Labour Prime Minister, Clement Attlee. These essays were written in the 1950s and give us Attlee's impressions of many of his contemporaries. This collection is of interest not just in a historical context but also as a reference for comparison of the men who ran the country in those post-war years with today's politicians. Attlee was an essentially modest man who possessed qualities of leadership that allowed him to hold together a cabinet that contained powerful characters like Ernest Bevin, Herbert Morrison, Stafford Cripps and Aneurin Bevan. In the circumstances after WWII when the country was flat on its back, he rebuilt our society laying the foundations for the economic growth of the 1950s and 1960s. He established the National Health Service, took major industries into public ownership - coal, electricity, gas and railways - and introduced reforms intended to achieve a more equitable society. To him principles were more important than presentation [spin]; intellect more important than celebrity. But he was a true lover of his country and its institutions. His landslide election win in 1945 came as a surprise to almost everyone, not least King George VI. Apparently, when Attlee went to Buckingham Palace to present his credentials, the King and the leader of the victorious Labour Party said little to each other for some minutes. Attlee thought he should try to move things along a bit so he told George VI that he had won the election. "I know", said the King, "I heard it on the News." The King asked him to form a government. The two then got down to details and it is recorded that the two men worked very well together for the next six years.

Clement Attlee and his ministers could never have contemplated the corruption and expenses fiddles that have come to the surface in Parliament in recent months. For them being Members of Parliament was a matter of honour and service to the country; any impropriety was a matter for resignation. To examine Attlee's government and the list of MPs elected in 1945 is a revelation and a stark comparison with the anonymous, ineffective and self-serving, limited-ability party men who inhabit the House of Commons in these early years of the 21st Century.

Democracy

Along the northern edge of Northamptonshire where it joins Leicestershire the morning of 14th June 1645 started damp, a cool mist drifting across the fields, the morning sun not yet warm enough to clear the air. In an area known as Broad Moor to the north of the village of Naseby opposing forces of King and Parliament lined up for what was to be the decisive battle of the Civil War. Initially the armies could not see each other through the mists but as the morning temperatures rose and the air cleared the forces clashed and a fierce battle was fought. The result was probably never in doubt as the Royalist forces lead by King Charles I and Prince Rupert of the Rhine were soundly defeated by Parliamentary forces lead by Thomas Fairfax, 3rd Baron Fairfax of Cameron and Oliver Cromwell. The Royalists suffered over 1,000 deaths on the battlefield with more than 5,000 of their force captured. The Battle of Naseby marked the end of any ability of Charles I to assemble a force sufficient to overcome Parliamentary forces. A year later the Civil War ended with Parliament totally victorious and the foundations set in place for a new democratic constitution with power lying in the hands of members of parliament.

The decisive nature of the encounter seems to have been un-noticed by the inhabitants of Naseby. The villagers were unmoved by forces passing through the area and they needed to concentrate on their own problems. The village had suffered badly in the Black Death of 1348 and still had not fully recovered. Large areas of the old village still lay abandoned. The parish register records only that one baby was baptised on that day.

Last week also marked the 200th anniversary of the death of Thomas Paine, that great 18th century political thinker and activist. What would the author of The Rights of Man have made of the present chaos in our parliamentary institutions? I think first and foremost he would have been depressed that we had not made more progress in democracy over the last 200 years. Could he have expected that we still had a House of Lords where membership was still largely a matter of birth and that our head of state was still a hereditary monarch? Thomas Paine believed in democracy but also, he hated religions. "Of all the tyrannies that affect mankind, the tyranny of religion is the worst." "One good schoolmaster is of more use than a hundred priests" He didn't specify if the priests were good or bad but I think he would have regarded all priests as bad.

Thomas Paine is always worth reading and he can still provide much guidance to our failing politicians. After twelve years of excessive government, the Labour Party could benefit from that homily of Paine which suggested that "That government is best that governs least."

Not Much Support Here

It is the morning of Tuesday 9th June and it's raining again. The Meteorological Office tells us that it is the European Monsoon. First, I have heard of it. Is global warming shifting the climate of Asia towards Europe? Or are they just feeding us rubbish? Yesterday was a day of gloom and political analysis as the newspapers and pundits sought to explain the European Election results. Overall it seems to me that not much changed either in the UK or in Europe generally. It was clear that, in spite of the EU spending £18m of our money on advertising and promotion of this election, not many people bothered to vote. The Europe wide voter turn-out continued its inexorable decline. Out of a total electorate of 375 million, a substantial number [210 million] did not bother to vote. The UK was one of the worst - we have never had much interest in Europe - and that is the prime reason why I think that no one should take too much notice of these results. It was a triumph for the Tories, of course - or at least that's what Diddy "Call me Dave" Cameron told us. In fact the Tory share was a mere 1% better than Michael Howard achieved in 2004. This, in spite of Labour doing worse than they have done in any election since about 1918. They came behind the Tories in Wales for the first time ever; indeed, the Tories have not been the leading party in Wales since 1859. But just how impressive is the Tory result in reality? Nationally, the wondrous Tories got 27.7% of the vote and since our turn-out was only 34.3%, that means that just 9.5% of the total electorate voted Tory, while UK Independence Party [UKIP], Labour and the Liberal-Democrats each managed to persuade between 4.7% and 5.7% of the total electorate to vote for them. Nothing to suggest a ringing endorsement of any party. Surely, Labour must believe that no matter how useless their own performance, the Tories are not exactly running riot.

The fact is that no matter how much we dislike Labour we do not have any overwhelming desire to be ruled by a bunch of rich, inexperienced, arrogant Old Etonians. I constantly harp on about this useless government but I have no confidence that electing Diddy Dave and the Tories will improve matters. Dave's own experience is in marketing - or what we could call commercial spin. Just the man we need to run the country.

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Labour Failures

Now is the early hours of Monday morning 7th June 2009 and we have just got in all the mainland results for the UK vote on the EU elections of 4th June. The Western Isles and Northern Ireland will declare their results tomorrow. As was long expected support for Labour has fallen and political commentators on the BBC Election Special have been fairly general in stating that this increases pressure on Gordon Brown and that he will have to go. It is ludicrous. The only credible leader that Labour has at this point is Gordon Brown. Many of the other suggested candidates are little more than sick jokes. If Labour are to recover in time for a General Election next year, their only hope is to unite behind Gordon Brown, tackle the real problems of the economy, MPs expenses and the total disillusionment of their traditional voters. But they must also address voter concerns on other matters or fringe parties will do well again at a General Election. Labour has lost votes - many votes - but the other major parties have not gained. Votes have gone to minority parties and most strikingly, the British National Party has gained 2 seats in Europe - and the financial boost that comes with their success.

Let us examine why things have happened. There is widespread disgust with the politics of the major parties - a plague on all your houses sums it up. Labour is in charge so the chaos and mess is down to them above all others, so they have taken the big knocks. But there is more. Gordon Brown has reneged on the promise made by Blair to give us a referendum on the European Constitution. This is because, the Labour apparatchiks tell us, the Lisbon Treaty is not "the Constitution", it is merely a tidying up exercise, changes nothing and so does not need a referendum. In truth, the Lisbon Treaty is virtually identical to the Constitution and we cannot have a referendum because we may give [probably will give] the wrong answer - and that in the EU is not permitted. Then there is Immigration. Not only has Labour not tackled the problem of legal Immigration, it has no idea of the magnitude of illegal Immigration. But Immigration is one of those non-topics that we are not allowed to discuss - as determined by the chattering liberals. It was so when Michael Howard tried to raise the issue in 2005. There are many people in Britain who are absolutely opposed to the present situation on immigration - and I am one of them. I want Immigration stopped. Not buried in spin-doctored statistics. I want it stopped. It is totally unacceptable that we have hoards of people from all over the Middle East, Asia and Africa congregating along the French coast waiting to find an illegal way into Britain, when they will disappear into the black economy or if they get picked up they will be ferried through the courts over and over again - at our expense - before they are deported or allowed to stay. It must stop completely. I have seen Britain change from the country I grew up in to some monstrous megalopolis of multiple cultures speaking dozens of languages and divided into ghettos with boundaries that we do not cross. The BNP has won 2 seats in the European Parliament because there are many who want Immigration stopped. And listening to the sanctimonious nonsense spoken by the main parties it is clear that it will not be stopped until we have elected enough BNP councillors MEPs and, surely, MPs until the message sinks in. If saying that makes me a racist; then so be it. Labour has lost because the New Labour Party of Tony Blair has abandoned its traditional supporters and their concerns in favour of the tax fiddling super-rich. Unless it reverses that it will be dispatched into the oblivion it deserves. And correcting that is not just a matter of replacing Gordon Brown with some Blairite clone.

Of Liverpool & Darlington

Liverpool and Darlington were important towns in the development of railways. Darlington was one end of the Stockton & Darlington Railway and Liverpool the origin of the Liverpool & Manchester Railway that started the great boom in railway construction around the world. But I have been thinking about other parallels between these two great northern towns. Yes, I know the much bigger Liverpool is a city. But the last few days have been very interesting one way and another. Liverpool? Yes, Liverpool. A story of success and sub-prime lending. I talk, of course, about the football team. Liverpool F.C. had a fairly successful season and were, perhaps, slightly unlucky not to have achieved more. Still they did come second in the Premier League and played in the Champions League. The club made £10m profit out of playing football - which may not seem brilliant but in the world of Football Finance, it is pretty good. It is typical of what Liverpool are able to do. But and it is a very big BUT, the off-shore parent company Kop Football [Holdings] Ltd. lost £42m. The primary reason for this was the interest payments on the money borrowed in order for Tom Hicks and George Gillett to buy the club in 2007. To buy the club they needed £185m. This was re-paid by setting up a new loan facility for £350m, using the club as collateral. This loan will have to be re-agreed with Royal Bank of Scotland, those paragons of financial virtue, before the end of next month. In addition to paying off their original loan the owners have spent over £120m and they have not yet started on the new stadium, which will be needed, they tell us, within four years. That stadium will cost about £400m. Errrr, how are they going to pay for that? I think I have understood the numbers and, if I have, then I feel the club is, as near as dam it, bust! Of course it will carry on but in a state of steady decline unless the club is sold to a very rich buyer. Football clubs do not really make money. Sure one or two seem to but even the most profitable football club in the world, Manchester United, is struggling with the burden of new debts. Liverpool's old stadium, Anfield, will hold 45,000 people. The club needs a new modern stadium that will hold 75,000. And someone has to pay for it. It will certainly not be Hicks & Gillett.

Stadiums are one of the reasons why it is so nearly impossible to make money from football. These playing areas take up a lot of space - usually prime land in cities - and a new facility costs up to £700m. But having made this enormous investment the facility does absolutely nothing for over 90% of the time. Here, I am being generous; this implies that the stadium would be in use for over 16 hours per week. In many cases it is much less. Somehow, a club has to create enough revenue from this facility to pay off debts and make a profit. And I have ignored the costs of players, etc.

A year or two back, in my professional capacity as an engineer, I attended a meeting set up by a chemical engineering contractor in a suite in the stadium of Darlington F.C., the Darlington Arena. I have to say that I was impressed. How did it pay for itself I wondered? The answer is that it didn't. The stadium cost about £30m when it was built in 2002. Various owners have tried to keep the club going but Darlington FC has tottered on the edge of collapse for years. The prime cause is this ridiculous stadium. It will hold 27,000 people - although local authority restrictions only allow more than 10,000 with special permission. But this is academic. Darlington F.C. are successful in playing football and the team was 2nd in the Championship Div 2 until they went into administration [again] in February owing £5m and were docked 10 points - quite why the players have to be penalised for the sins of the financiers, is not entirely clear to me. The trouble is that in spite of attempts to attract other users the Darlington Arena is used mainly for football matches a couple of times per week and average gates are about 3,000. Adult ticket prices are £18.00. The club's web site advises that buying tickets in advance will give a discount of 10% and will avoid match day queues. I think this is yet another triumph of hope over experience. Assuming the stadium has at least 20 entrances the crowds surging into the ground will only amount to 150 people per match per gate.- not, I would have thought, a recipe for queues of any kind. Watching Darlington play football can be a lonely experience in a ground that will hold 27,000 people. It does mean that total income from a match is about £50,000 - or less. Hardly a viable business plan. But all football is fantasy economics. Last month the club was "sold" to new owners and they may now again start to pay the players and staff.

Clearly Liverpool is a different kettle of fish to Darlington. But mainly, because they just have bigger numbers. The end result is the same. They owe more money to more people. Financing football clubs is serious sub-prime lending.

Keep Calm & Carry On

This morning it is raining. Nothing unusual in that. It is June after all. And the results of local elections are coming in showing Labour losing seats and Tories and Lib-Dems gaining. Nothing unusual in that either. But at this moment [2.25 pm] it does not seem to me that the Tories are doing all that well. Gordon Brown is constructing his new cabinet with Alan Johnson moving to be Home Secretary. Citywire News provided the information that in the Dept of Work & Pensions the departure of Purnell results in the 15th change of minister in this department in 12 years of Labour government. It is incredible. They do not take pensions seriously. It is hardly surprising that their performance has been so completely pathetic. But total incompetence is no excuse for stinting on bureaucracy. In these same 12 years of Labour misrule there have been more than 700 pieces of pensions legislation. What was it all for? What has been achieved? What has it all cost? With the diddy pixie Yvette Cooper [aka Mrs Balls] moving to Work & Pensions I am less than convinced that anything of any great moment will come from this department and it will continue puffing out smokescreens to hide the dearth of anything concrete. i would like to be proved wrong.

It does at least look as if there are some elements in the Labour Party that still have the sense to see that the priority for them and for the country is a strong and stable government concentrating on getting on with the main job of sorting out the economic mess, reforming parliament and planning for a real future. Not faffing about playing some political game, planning on a 3 month leadership election, like a bunch of bored students. They may not like Gordon Brown much but he is far and away the best they have got. The Guardian has now turned against him. Has Polly Toynbee lost her marbles?

Men With Feet of Clay

At 10.00pm today, James Purnell resigned as Work & Pensions Secretary in Gordon Brown's cabinet. That makes three cabinet resignations in three days. Am I concerned? Not really. As this useless Labour government disintegrates, it is revealing just how little these lightweight individuals matter. There is no substance to this government. There is not a single cabinet minister who could ever be considered as a substantial figure in the history of the Labour Party. It is said that this is a consequence of any government sticking around for too long. It was said about John Major, as he struggled to keep his government and party together - with lots of ex-ministers on the back benches. But even at the end, John Major still had Michael Heseltine, Michael Howard, Kenneth Clark and Douglas Hurd in his cabinet - all reasonably respected, mature and experienced politicians. Now, we seem to have a Labour Party with very minor figures sitting as MPs, lacking in age, knowledge and experience and hopelessly over promoted beyond their own abilities. How can Gordon Brown construct a credible cabinet out of the material available? Some of the suggestions for men and women who could be future leaders are, frankly, absurd.

But am I persuaded of the quality of the Cameron team? No, I am not. Kenneth Clark is the only man in whom I would have any confidence whatsoever. Am I alone in thinking this? I believe not. It was long said that it was governments that lost elections, not oppositions that won them. That is certainly true today. The Tories have little more credibility than Labour and they have done as much, if not more, expenses fiddling than has Labour. Cameron has had an easy ride. He has managed to say very little about what he will actually do to get us out of this mess. And fundamentally, we need a major act of parliamentary reform that gives us the democracy that we have never had and gives more power for us to select the MPs that we want.

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The next few weeks may be very interesting but I hope we come out of it with something better than more of the same and a removal of all the fudge from the edges.

D-Day Commemoration

As many people will know, I have held the opinion, consistently, that the government of Blair/Brown is the worst in my life-time; not just by a bit but by miles. Polly Toynbee not withstanding, I can think of few redeeming features to attach to this government. We have had some shocking governments in the past and, sometimes, I think that I am being a bit too harsh on Blair/Brown. And then they come along with another great cock-up that adds to the body of evidence against them.

This time it is the 65th commemoration of D-Day. The government has played down the importance of this anniversary and has shown little interest. The reality is that this will probably be the last occasion when men who took part will be able to go in any numbers to Normandy. By the time of the 70th anniversary there will be only a handful of men in their nineties. The event was to remain low key until it was revealed that President Obama was coming for his first visit to Europe as president; he would attend the commemoration and would be there with President Sarkozy. This raised the status very significantly but, Mr Sarkozy told us, this was to be primarily a Franco-American affair. At that point any half-decent government would have reacted and would have stepped in to correct a few misapprehensions. But, no!

What were the facts? On 6th June 1944 more than 83,000 British and Canadian troops landed on the beaches of Normandy with the support of 8,000 airborne troops; there were 73,000 Americans. There were no French forces. On the first day of the invasion there were about 4,500 Allied troops killed, more than half being Americans. The War Cemeteries of Northern France hold the bodies of 30,000 British, American, Canadian and Polish forces as well as 80,000 Germans. These are not facts that we should forget. On the Internet there is a great deal of information about D-Day - much of it American in origin - and reading this, it is difficult not to believe that Britain is being written out of the war. We expect this in Hollywood films but not in real life. The French resent the fact that the D-Day landings and the invasion of Normandy were necessary to liberate France. The French forces arrived in August.

The Queen was not invited although Gordon Brown was going. President Sarkozy and President Obama are heads of state. HM Queen is our head of state and, what is more HM Queen and Prince Phillip are the only world leaders still in office who served in WWII. President Obama seems to have realised this and now after some behind the scenes diplomacy Prince Charles will go and represent HM Queen. If the Queen was fit to travel, she should have been there but for her to be slotted in at the last minute would have been too much of a slight so her eldest son will go instead.

Is there anything that Brown and his incompetent crew can possibly get right? Or is it just that they are too tied up sorting out their expenses?

Strange Times

We live in strange times. Today, I received some literature advising me about a glorious investment opportunity in a fund that would be managed by a man who is, I am told " one of the most gifted fund managers of his generation." Praise indeed. I could not bother investigating what he had done to earn this accolade since anything I found out would come with the standard warning that previous results are not a guarantee of future performance. I can tell you with absolute certainty which horse won the Grand National this year but I have no idea which horse will win next year. Of course, a fund manager would work for an investment bank - probably - and what we do know is that as far as their own remuneration packages are concerned past performance is a very good guide to future performance. Already the financial wheeler-dealers are working out the schemes needed to get back to paying themselves ever increasing amounts of money. They need, of course, to stay ahead of senior directors of big companies who [according to Robert Peston on his blog] have seen their remuneration rise by 295% over the last 10 years, while average wages have risen by only 44%. Even in 1998 the pay of CEOs was 47 times the average - already high by international standards - but now it is a staggering 128 times greater. Some [but not all] of the increase has been gained by performance related bonuses, which, quirkily, have managed to increase while the performance of their companies has stagnated or - more likely - has declined. Now, new bonus schemes being developed will guarantee yet more money for these distressed captains of industry. And the financial wizards will need to pay themselves more and more to keep abreast - or ahead. When will this excess end?

On Thursday we have European and County Council elections which will mark the first phase of putting the New Labour Party on the path towards the electoral oblivion that it so richly deserves. It will be next year's General Election [unless it happens sooner] which will mark the end. I have no idea what the final result will be. Ideally, we should have major reforms of the whole electoral system before we hand a massive majority to a Tory Party elected on yet another minority vote. But the obscenity of the rewards garnered by the already rich will be remembered and catalogued on the gravestone of the New Labour Party, unprincipled party of hypocrisy and spin. And the chief architect [Tony Blair] will disappear into the sunset to live off his days in the luxury to which he has become accustomed.