Mark Cavendish for SPOY

Who will be the BBC Sports Personality of the Year 2011?  My vote and, I hope yours will go to bike rider Mark Cavendish who has had a fantastic year in which he became the first ever British rider to win the green jersey for sprinters at the Tour de France and became the cycling World Road Race Champion — the first male to win that in 46 years.  Mark Cavendish, along with others like Sir Chris Hoy and Bradley Williams have done wonders for British bike riding.  We are now looking forward to the battles they will have at the Olympics next year and — possibly — in the Tour de France as well.

So — Vote for Mark Cavendish!  Never mind the cricketers, the golfers — especially the golfers — the boxer, the tennis player and the others;  Mark's the Man!

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Chirac Guilty

I am updating this post because I have done a bit more investigating of the extraordinary circumstances of the prosecution in the French Court of the former president Jacques Chirac.  Chirac was in court on Thursday 15th December and he was found guilty of diverting public funds and abusing public trust.  He was given a suspended gaol sentence which seems to be the norm for corrupt politicians in France.  This man, working at the heart of French politics for the best part of fifty years, was a sleaze ball and crook who was kept for years at state expense, living a life of luxury.  The object of this prosecution relates to his time as Mayor of Paris yet it has taken years to get into a court.  During his time as Mayor he diverted money to his political party the RPR in payment for jobs that did not exist.  The 79 year old former president will not appeal he said, because he is too weak.  In this extraordinary trial, the prosecution — apparently acting under pressure from President Sarkozy — repeatedly urged the judges to find Chirac not guilty and acquit him of all charges.  The action of the judges in ignoring this advice, is, if nothing else, a condemnation of the French prosecution service.  In what kind of court does the prosecution urge that the defendant be found not guilty?

It is said that Chirac is popular in France — why?  Maybe its because he is no longer in power and everyone must be thankful of that.  What is it about France that makes them like crooks and slime balls as potential holders of high office — I am thinking of ............ well there are quite a few possibilities.  Our politicians may not always be as squeaky clean as we would like but they are not this bad.

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In Defence of Libraries

The progressive shutting down and permanent closure of public libraries is proceeding apace with many local authorities throughout the land.  In many areas there has been stout opposition to these plans but far too many local authorities seem determined to proceed down this road to ignorance.  Local authorities have a statutory duty to provide library services but many are choosing to interpret that duty in a less than rigorous manner. Gloucestershire and Somerset Council was determined to close 21 of their libraries until campaigners took them to court and won an order that instructed the council abide by its duty.  Incredibly, Brent Council in North London has spent £150,000 defending its plan to close half of its libraries — one of which, apparently, was opened in 1900 by literary giant, Mark Twain.  Many well-known people have been joining the campaign to keep the libraries and they should drag in as many supporters as possible.

I have to admit that I rarely use libraries these days but this is because I have about 2,500 books of my own.  But I still support all those who are fighting for libraries to stay open.  When I was a child I went to the local library up in Atherton all the time taking out great piles of books that I read at top speed. That library in a small northern industrial urban district was a gem.  There was so much in there to help educate a growing boy.  The schools taught us to read and the library provided the material to read.  I read — and came to love — Dickens, Conrad, Graham Greene, Somerset Maugham, J.B. Priestley and many another as well as more popular detective stories of such as Conan Doyle and Agatha Christie.  And books of history, travel, geography, etc.  Today, we are concerned about the educational failings of young people and this surely is not the time to cut the libraries.  An ability to read well is a fundamental of gaining an education and when many homes no longer have books, we should be encouraging the use of libraries not closing them down.   These days half the homes in Britain have no books in them whatsoever.  I could not even imagine a home with no books but such a situation will make it more difficult to get young people reading more books.

It is said that electronic book reading is the future.  I am all in favour of the Kindle book reader but this will not replace the hardback and paperback book.  There is nothing like holding the real book in the hands and curling up to read it.  One other thing; once a book has been published and purchased it can be read at any time in the future — and over and over again,  An e0book depends on technology and while it may be possible to store 100,000 books on a single machine, the latest technology and the machine itself will always be needed to allow anything to be read.  A book is complete in itself and will be readable, if looked after, for a thousand years.

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Prosperity In Our Time

I have seen a report — not yet confirmed — that prior to returning to England David Cameron was invited to another private meeting with Mrs Merkel — in Munich, I believe. Without the French President present it seems that this meeting went off in a much friendlier atmosphere and that the two were able to sign a document — an accord — that would form the basis of a new relationship with Europe. Waving the document aloft when he met Tory back-benchers at Chequers last night, he said that this agreement guaranteed a new Europe. "It gives us prosperity in our time," he said.

If this agreement is confirmed, it will mark the start of a new era in which Britain again becomes an independent nation with total control of its finances, without interference in it legislation, without needing to contribute buckets of money to Brussels, without needing to attend the expensive, meaningless meetings about the EU, without piles of red tape, without need to subsidize corruption, without a bloated bureaucracy, without needing to elect members to a useless European Parliament, without anti-British legislation, without H&S legislation that shuts down kids playgrounds, etc., etc. and with an opportunity to make new efforts to sell into the world of emerging economies.

You may suggest that I am just another nationalistic Little Englander. But I am not. When we had a referendum on UK membership of the EU in 1975, I voted, "Yes!" But then I thought — like most people — that I was voting for an enlarged free-trade area. In the last 36 years the EU has gone way beyond that with a vast undemocratic bureaucracy that seeks to control our lives. And this new accord will take the EU one step further down the road to a monster federal state. At least, it will if it succeeds in its objectives. In reality, I think it is more likely that the euro area will collapse under the unrelieved debt burden. We will have to see. As I said yesterday,I think we should get out and try again to re-establish our connections with EFTA.

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Time To Leave The EU?

Well, I didn't think he would do it but he has. When push came to shove, David Cameron vetoed the proposal of a new European Treaty to allow Germany and France to impose financial controls on all the countries of Europe with little or no democratic control. Merkel and Sarkozy are now determined to put together an "accord" which will allow those countries that wish to join the inner Europe an opportunity of taking part in the discussions. I think this will primarily be Germany and France. Maybe Belgium and Holland will sign up but I am doubtful about the countries of Southern Europe unless their un-elected governments are allowed to bamboozle their electorates into allowing it to happen. If these talks make any progress then I think Britain should go the whole hog and leave the EU. If there is some kind of accord between a small number of the 27, who will pay for the operation of the inner circle? Why should Britain pay money to the EU in order to allow them to manipulate the systems in ways that would be to our disadvantage?

I may be anti- Europe and so may many of the electorate in the UK. But we are by no means unique. What will Ireland do? Already the Irish are weighed down by austerity measures imposed by Brussels and yet a very large part of their business is with the UK. Would they not be better with a resurrected Pund linked to Sterling? Will Denmark sign up? Will Sweden? Both countries are outside the Euro and doing quite well. I think we are getting very close to the point where Britain just detaches from Europe completely.

Before we became a full member of this bureaucratic nightmare, we were a member of EFTA - the European Free Trade Association. EFTA still exists although it has been diminished by countries leaving — like Britain — and joining the EU. I think it is time to look again at the possibility of our co-operating with the EFTA and possibly taking other countries with us. The remaining members are Switzerland, Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway. Only Switzerland and Norway have got significant populations but all four are doing rather well compared with the Euro countries. EFTA worked very well in the old days and I would be much happier working with the group of countries of the old EFTA in a free trade area — without the vast clogging, money wasting uselessness of Brussels.

We have to wait to see what happens next but I think Boris Johnson hit the nail on the head when he suggested that the situation in Europe was like taking a patient into hospital suffering from cancer and watching the doctors fighting to save the cancer at the expense of the patient.

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RIP Harry Morgan

Probably — no, definitely — the best TV series to come out of the USA has been Mash — the series set in Korea during the war, which lasted from June 1950 to July 1953. It was an appalling conflict in which 37,000 Americans were killed along with 3,727 soldiers and airmen from 16 other countries including, even 2 from Luxembourg. These staggering numbers are dwarfed by the numbers of combatants killed from the Republic of [South] Korea and the Democratic People's Republic of [North] Korea, which together exceeded 350,000. Add to these another 400,000 dead from China and the USSR plus 2.5 million civilians killed and wounded. The magnitude of the slaughter is now almost forgotten and yet, like so often, the conflict ends with a fudge.

How could a comedy series be set amidst such slaughter. It was and it was very successful and became a powerful anti-war drama-documentary. It was detested by the right-wing establishment and by the military because it was so anti-war.

I have watched many of episodes of every series and enjoyed it immensely. It succeeded not least because it had such a strong cast. I do not wish to diminish any of the actors but the performances of Harry Morgan as Colonel Potter were superb. I am moved to comment on this magnificent series now because, yesterday, Harry Morgan died at his home in California of pneumonia at the grand age of 96. RIP Harry, you gave us all a great deal of pleasure.

In spite of the fact that Mash was on TV nearly 40 years ago, almost all the main actors are still alive; not necessarily still acting but still busy.

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National Defense Authorisation Act

The National Defense Authorisation Act is a piece of legislation in the USA that passes through Congress every year and allows the government to go ahead with its annual spending on Defense - this year $662 billion. The bill for 2012 was passed by in the Senate last week and now goes to the House of Representatives for approval before the president's signature. This year it has become controversial because slipped into the bill is an inclusion of a provision allowing military custody of anyone suspected of being a terrorist, believed to be a member of Al Qaeda or any of its affiliates and involved in attacks anywhere in the USA. The provision would allow anyone suspected of being a terrorist to be incarcerated indefinitely without legal advice and without being charged or brought before a court. Many libertarians are up in arms about the prospect of American citizens being locked up without any charges being brought and with no time limits. America is already stuck with the Homeland Security Bill that has brought massive surveillance on the People of the USA via an administration — George W Bush — with a parnoid obsession about terrorism. This latest piece of nonsense is yet another step down the road to an authoritarian police state — as if we didn't have enough of those in the world already. The arguments will go on and President Obama has indicated that he is minded not to sign off the bill but it is a bad sign of things to come.

We will have to wait the outcome but it is yet another sign that the world's rulers, while becoming increasingly inadequate to the point of total incompetence, are determined to eliminate opposition and criticism. In Europe as the manoeuvrings on the fate of the euro go on, Angela Merkel and Nicholas Sakozy try to fathom a way of re-organising Europe to give more power to the undemocratic Council of Ministers and the European Commission via "treaty" changes that will not require democratic approval via referendums — which are notoriously prone to giving the Wrong answers. The governments in Greece and Italy have been replaced without any elections — that in Italy is made up of a Prime Minister — formerly employed by Goldmann Sachs and the European Union — who has never been elected for anything and he has chosen a cabinet of ministers who also have never been elected. I am opposed to the whole principle of the single currency and the sooner it disappears down the plughole the better. But the present activities are all about denying that the European Union got the idea of a single currency wrong in the first place. The Commission carries on in its own sweet way, year after year failing to get its accounts approved as it chucks billions of euros down the drain in the cause of corruption or the promotion of its own existence. There is no control, there is no responsibility — so many people appear to be in charge that it is impossible to establish where responsibility lies. There is, of course, a European Parliament which costs money and gives veneer of respectability without having any control whatsoever.

Our leaders are in competent but hey give themselves ever more authority to plunge down the next disastrous road to oblivion. They really have got to be stopped!

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Gary Speed [1969 - 2011]

Last Sunday morning, we heard the terrible news that footballer and manager of the Welsh Football Team, Gary Speed, was dead. Why was this such a shock to so many people; after all we will all die sometime? The shock here was that Gary Speed was only 42 years old, was liked by everyone — no one has had a bad word to say about him — his career has been a complete success, as far as we know he was 100% healthy and the future looked rosy. Yet, in the early hours of that Sunday morning, he hanged himself. Earlier on Saturday afternoon he had appeared on Football Focus on TV and seemed full of life. Afterwards he chatted with his mate Alan Shearer about his family and it was agreed that Gary Speed and his wife would come up to the north-east next week to stay with the Shearers. The two men would have a round of golf. Yet 12 hours later he was dead. Why? At this time no one knows and unless there was a suicide note somewhere or a confidante appears, we never will know.

As a professional player, Gary Speed played for five clubs, including a few years with Bolton Wanderers back in Big Sam Allardyce's days, was successful in every case, had a long career and was rarely injured. At the time of his death, he was the manager of the Welsh national side that qualified for the European Cup and again everything seemed to be going well. We know of no personal problems or money problems, so what went wrong? I don't know but looking at all the pictures of Gary Speed that have been printed in newspapers in the last week, there is something about the expression on his face that is not quite right.

Everybody has a great deal of their personality written on their face — arrogance, cruelty, illness, bad temper, madness, delusion, etc. etc; it can all be there. In the case of Gary Speed there is a dark brooding expression that shows through his features all the time. There was some dark force that he never revealed that was always troubling him. It is there in all the pictures taken over the last ten years or more. Is this my imagination being wise after the event? I don't think so. I have never looked at Gary Speed's face at all until the last week but now it seems that in every picture there is a darkness. In spite of all his success, did he, when he was alone, fear failure? Did he worry about letting people down? Did the job of managing the Welsh Football Team and taking them to the European Cup become the final straw that overwhelmed him?

It is all questions and speculation. But the fact is that a well-loved, decent and successful individual was so overcome by hidden pressures that suddenly — as far as we know — he decided that the only way out was death. His case is not unique and always we ask, why? But no answers come. The Professional Footballers Association has this week put out a booklet of notes to try to help those suffering from hidden stresses. It is an attempt to do something but i doubt if it will make much difference.

It is a sad story. For Gary it is too late now but our thoughts must be with his family in these distressing times.

RIP Gary

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Death of the Harriers

Today the government have sold 72 Harrier Jump Jets to the USA for £180 million. It is a good deal for UK taxpayers says Defence Minister Peter Luff. Who is he? These aircraft will be used by the Americans as a source of spares for their own fleet of Harriers. I don't doubt that it is a good deal for them. It will provide a pretty hefty source of spare parts which they would otherwise have had to buy new from the British manufacturers. And since every company makes lots of money from selling spares I think the total cost would come out at much above £180 m. But is it a good deal for us? I think not. These aircraft were supposed to be suitable for use until 2025 and they are virtually irreplaceable. They have proved themselves to be remarkable aircraft with a tremendous record in operational service and a unique capability of vertical take off and landing. Now we have got rid of our aircraft carriers and their aircraft and in a few years time [2020] we will have the two biggest aircraft carriers that we have ever built - but with no aircraft. Is this a programme for the defence of the realm or just for wasting money? Selling the Harriers will save us £1 billion per year says Mr Luff. He may be right but I suspect that he is not and some time in the near future we will come to regret not having these Harriers and the Ark Royal.

Incidentally, why is it taking so long to build the new aircraft carriers? Or have we just slowed down the building programme - at extra cost, of course - in order not to have them sailing around for too long without any aircraft. Pretty vulnerable things aircraft carriers without aircraft. Is it all true or is just a MOD joke?

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No More Honey

I have provided this blog with nothing but stunning silence for the last few weeks. I am not quite sure why; there have been plenty of things to write about. I have come to life again today following my reading of the death of Shelagh Delaney. She died just 5 days short of her 72nd birthday and was suffering from cancer. Born in Salford, she truly was one of my contemporaries - both in time and place. She is most famous for her first published play — A Taste of Honey. Set in Salford in the 1950s, the play deals sensitively with the subject of homosexuality. It was accepted by Joan Littlewood's Theatre Workshop and became a success world-wide. It was performed on Broadway with Angela Lansbury as the mother - which seems an extraordinary slection. Mrs Dale in kitchen sink drama - shock. Perhaps, I am being unkind. Angela Lansbury has had a very varied career but I can't get Murder She Wrote out of my mind.

A Taste of Honey was made into a film with Rita Tushingham and Dora Bryan and really did create the atmosphere of post-war Salford. I could almost see L.S. Lowery's matchstick men running across every scene. It was a moving film and one that I can remember very clearly even though it was fifty years since I saw it in a Leeds cinema. The play was produced at the Theatre Royal, Stratford - not on-Avon but Stratford with Bow in the Borough of Newham in the East End of London. I went there in 1963 with my friend Keith Mills, to see Oh What A Lovely War. The Theatre Royal was then an extraordinary place. Before the Theatre Workshop took it over it was virtually derelict; abandoned in an area that seems mainly one of bomb-sites. You could take the tube to Stratford and then you walked across this desolate landscape - interestingly, the pavements seemed to have survived - until you reached the theatre, which was not far from the tube station. The building had been semi-renovated by the members of the cast of actors and off stage staff and had an odour of new paint about it. It was not a big place and had a wonderfully intimate atmosphere which was boosted by the actors appearing in the auditorium. I remember that visit so well and I will say it was one the most enjoyable visits to a theatre that I have ever made.

I was sorry to hear of the death of Shelagh Delaney. She never produced anything quite like that first play which she wrote in just ten days. There was something there that she just wanted to say and perhaps she never felt quite that inspiration again.

Rest in Peace.

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Crisis in the Euro Zone

I have posted nothing for six weeks. It is astonishing to everyone of my age just how quickly time passes by. I have had a dose of flu which kept me depressed and withdrawn for over two weeks and then I have been in the North of England, where I was visiting mys sister in hospital. Now things are getting back to normal. But I have not been oblivious to what has been going on in the world. I have enjoyed watching the Rugby Union World Cup even if the England team were an embarrassment on and off the field. I find it extraordinary that men paid substantial wages, playing at the highest level, think that getting pissed out of your mind and indulging in partying in the middle of the night is suitable behaviour for preparing for matches where you are out to beat the world. Alcohol is bad for athletic performance at any time and drinking to excess is not an option in the careers of serious athletes. If they want to go binge drinking week after week, they should give up international [and club] rugby and go away to become piss artists. Anyway. it's all over and done with now. The right team won and Wales played a blinder even if they came away with nothing — except a lot of experience and the makings of a team with a great future.

Now to other matters and the great Euro fiasco. As every day passes the farce that is the European Union becomes ever more apparent. Many years ago we used to get Brian Rix on TV with Leo Franklyn, Larry Noble and the rest of the team from the Whitehall Theatre in uproarious farces that were hugely enjoyable. The great Euro Farce is bigger, repetitive, costly and much less enjoyable. I have long been of the view that if the European Union did not exist, we would not need to invent it. The whole thing is a bureaucratic monstrosity that needs to be put out of its misery so that Europe and the World can move on and try to rebuild the world economy.

But look what is happening. The politicians have been talking and talking about the problems of debt —in particular, Greek debt. Vast meetings of politicians, bureaucrats and media men get together over and over again to talk about something which is insoluble. It is a catastrophe, a debacle, a disaster, a mess, a flop. How many more nouns meaning catastrophe do we need to use before the message sinks in. Greece is not the only problem country but it is the worst at present. Last week after another marathon session, another bundle of sticking plaster was brought out to stick over the cracks and give more breathing space while EU leaders went round the world with the begging bowl to get someone to lend them more money. Why do so many politicians believe that borrowing more money is a means of getting out of debt? In this latest plan 50% of Greek debt would be written off — it should be noted that this would not be a default. A novel bit of thinking that but in the Euro zone such new speak is the norm. The reason they have decided this will not be allowed to be called a default is because they think this will avoid anyone having to pay out on CDS insurances against Greek debt — which could double the losses. Whether the losers will accept this is quite another matter. Greece would sign up to yet more austerity measures which would allow the EU, by some means or other, to lend them more money. This would not eliminate Greek debt. The economy would contract, the Greeks would have a torrid time for years to come and by 2020 they would still owe 120% of GDP. It is a non-plan. It is meaningless. It is absurd. The EU should start at once planning for the dismantling of the Euro and re-establishing national currencies. Money is the means by which we carry on day-to-day life and commercial exchange, but in Europe the Euro has become not a means of facilitating trade but an enterprise of itself. The cost in useless meetings alone is astronomical. Sooner rather than later the Euro will collapse. Greek is a small country with 0.16% of the world's population yet it is causing economic paralysis world-wide. After the politicians thought they had agreed another slight of hand that would help paper over the cracks yet again, the Greek Prime Minister, Mr Papandreou, announced to the world — without telling his Euro partners — that he was going to put the latest plan to the Greek people in a referendum. This caused shock and horror. The EU politicians do not like referendums because the people keep giving the wrong answers. The right thing to do is never, never ask the people to give their agreement on anything. At this moment it seems very likely that the Greek people bogged down with riots and unrest will say "No!" and then, not only will the latest rescue plan be dead, the Euro will be on life support — and more and more millions will be spent talking about it. If by some means or other the Greek problem is overcome, then the much bigger problems of indebted Spain and Italy will rear their ugly heads. And the latter country is run by a man who is incompetent, treated as a joke by other Euro leaders and is probably corrupt. Not a scenario for an easy solution to the insoluble.

As all this nonsense continues the pro-Europe lobby in the UK goes on and on about how important it is for us to be "at the heart of Europe." They are clearly deranged. Crackers!

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Depression Ahead?

Last week - on Thursday - the world's stock markets went tumbling down again as rating agencies, the IMF and the US Federal Reserve each made statements about the state of the world economy, predicting negligible growth, high unemployment and astronomical debts. In the UK, last month the government had to borrow £15.9 billion - a record, in spite of the government's attempts to cut spending. In Greece, the government is trying to put the economy on sound foundations - or at least show itself able to collect its taxes - in order to get another lump of bale-out money from the EU. The FTSE 100 fell 4% in a morning - which I believe is not far off the record for financial disasters. But what is there to be optimistic about? The world is crippled by debts and no government or international body is actually doing anything about it. Every gathering of bureaucrats and ministers, internationally, produces much weeping, wailing and gnashing of teeth, but nothing changes.

How can Greece get out of its present mess? The government will lay off very large numbers of workers - who will, presumably get benefit payments - and send 30,000 home on half pay while they do nothing. The economy is contracting at the rate of 5%+ per annum, so government tax income will drop - even with extra property taxes, etc. Lending them more money will just put off the inevitable - even if strikes don't shut everything down anyway. Greece will default and the EU needs to tackle that now. More and more delay just puts off the evil day and makes things worse in Italy, Spain, Portugal, et al.

Now its is Tuesday morning 27th September and the latest reports suggest that the leaders of Europe are facing up to do something serious about Euro stability. The bail out fund of the European Financial Stability Facility has Eu 440 billion but it seems that the EU Central Bank is going to leverage this upwards by getting backing from all member states to pump this up to Eu 3.6 trillion. A quite staggering sum. As part of this new scheme Greece will be allowed to default on half its debts leaving the country owing a mere Eu 180 billion. This will still leave many banks in trouble as the scale of their lending is revealed. Will this work? I doubt it. The problems of Spain, Italy, Portugal and Ireland still exist and pressure on those will increase as we write off Greece.

This chaos is telling us daily what a ludicrous idea it was to set up the Euro zone in the first place. It will never work. Increase the financial integration and tighten up on financial controls but Greece and Italy will never become Germany.

The USA is criticizing the EU for allowing this disaster to rumble on but they are not much better. I think they have sorted out their banks but the country is still lumbered with huge debt problems and a collection of loony Republicans control the House of Representatives. So the boss of the Federal Reserve predicts doom and gloom and things get worse.

Interestingly, there was an article in The Observer at the weekend that suggests that the investment banks now serve little purpose and they have to spend their time indulging in the casino gambling just to justify the numbers of staff and in order to generate the huge amounts of money to which their staff think they are entitled. The argument is that there is now nowhere near enough business for investment banks to spend their time providing services and advise to multi-nationals. If this is anything like true why do we have to tolerate the potential hazards in having to bail them out? Lord Turner some time ago suggested that the London financial services industry was too big, too greedy and much of what it did was "socially useless." It seems that other people are coming to the same conclusions. It is nonsense to tolerate investment banks pumping money round and round the system in ever more complicated instruments that nobody understands in order to somehow guarantee that bankers get paid buckets of money.

Over here, I believe that we should increase interest rates. This goes against accepted belief but we have been chuntering along with a base rate of 0.5% for nearly 2 years without any great benefits and a lot of disadvantages. Our currency is kept at low value - thus, we are told, helping exporters - and this makes our imports expensive - thus keeping inflation high. Printing money makes matters worse by devaluing the currency even more. We import so much that low interest rates will always have a negative effect on the cost of living. Added to this, low interest rates keep house prices high. For anyone who can afford a substantial deposit interest rates on mortgages are low. Banks want high deposits on houses now because they believe that prices will, in the medium term, fall. This way they do not lose money if 20% comes off the price of houses. Jack up interest rates and houses prices will fall allowing poorer borrowers to persuade banks to accept a lower deposit and making it possible to buy a house. Demand will make it easier for more houses to be built and nothing stimulates the economy more than building work - because so much of their materials are obtained in the UK. Higher interest rates will improve income from savings and people will have more money to spend.

There are experts who are now starting to have doubts about very low interest rates that take away all possibility of the Bank of England controlling inflation rates, etc.

The state of the world's finances is awful and, as I have said before, the leaders in charge are not a very capable lot. A trader interviewed on a news bulletin said that total disaster was around the corner but he didn't care because he would make a lot of money out of it. "Governments don't control the world," he said, "Goldman Sachs does." We are now listening to the language of the Apocalypse. I hope he is wrong.

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The Road To Depression

This morning the stock markets of the world tumbled yet again because of "worries about the debt crisis". This worry goes on and on because many meetings of political leaders never resolve anything. Last Friday there was a meeting in Poland of European finance ministers along with Tim Geithner, the US treasury secretary. The only conclusions reached was that they should put off a decision on bailing out Greece until ................. sometime in the future - as the old tin can went rattling down the road and into the long grass. Geithner suggested that this was not good enough but the Europeans were inclined to suggest that he get back to America and sort out the problems there. The whole world is drowning in debt and it seems that the only people oblivious to the fact that we are tottering on the edge of the abyss are the politicians and the bankers, the people primarily responsible for getting us into this mess. The bankers continue to pay themselves awesome amounts of money as banks rake in more and more from charges levied on everyone who uses their services from small current account holders to big companies arranging cooperate A&Ms. The problems are serious. Last week it was revealed that UBS, the Swiss banking group, had lost $2 billion as a result of uncontrolled activities of a "rogue trader". This "rogue trader", Kweku Adoboli, a derivatives trader seems to have been playing around with what are called virtual ETFs [exchange traded funds], an area of fog-bound betting that serves no real purpose, except to allow the betting of large sums of money on [usually] currency movements. Every time there is a disaster like this - and today the estimated loss has been boosted to $2.3 billion - it is a "rogue trader". No it is not; it is a trader who was very greedy who cocked it up. There will be lots of others at it and everyone just hopes nothing goes wrong. Mr Adoboli is 31 years old and just a trader sitting at a computer desk, who last year was paid £200,000 in salary and £400,000 in bonuses. But clearly this bonkers level of remuneration was not enough, he wanted more and the bank has caught the hit. Should we be sympathetic? To whom? The UBS bank has been in deep water before and has been telling the world that it has cleaned up its systems to prevent this unregulated gambling from occurring. Clearly this was untrue. It is, perhaps, a good thing that this disaster happened when the Vickers Report had just been published and that this was recommending that the big banks - too big to fail - should have the investment arms separated from the high street operations so that we did not have to bail out the investment banks if they hit the rocks. The government has accepted the recommendations but is prepared to allow the banks 8 years to complete the changes. This should give them enough time to wriggle off the hook and ensure that we continue to be the long stop for every bit of manoeuvring and gambling that goes wrong.

Coming back to the international political scene, we have to ask when will our leaders act? Never in the recent times have we had such a collection, worldwide, of inept, uncharismatic, second-rate leaders. They don't know what to do and every single one of them is worried only by the next by-election that may be a bad result for their various political parties. There is no leadership from this collection of never men and women. They swan around the world from one conference to the next and talk a lot but do nothing. Some of the gatherings are so immense that the possibility of a result must be zero from day one. Fundamentally, they do not seem to see that the whole of the capitalist system is collapsing. Greece will default; that is certain. But how many other countries will go down the drain? The Euro Zone relies on Germany for bail outs and the German public does not want to carry on chucking money at incompetent, corrupt and terminally basket case economies. Euro politicians do not want to admit that the Euro cannot carry on unless there is massive restructuring - and a massive bail out fund. The USA is bedevilled by a weak president and a Republican Party dominated by naive, self-confident, fundamentalist religious loonies, whom I would not trust to fry an egg. America has immense private debt and a public debt of $14.4 trillion and still rising. Whole towns and cities are collapsing - look at Detroit - unemployment is 10% and 40 million Americans live below the poverty line and have no health insurance. Much government money was spent on bailing out the financial system but vast amounts have been spent on pointless wars.

The situation is desperate and serious and I just hope that our politicians and bureaucrats realise it before it is too late and we disappear into a new dark age of depression that will make the 1930s look like a little local difficulty.

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Olympian Shopping Centre

As we slowly approach the day of the start of the London Olympics, hardly a day goes by without the leaking of some new piece of Olympian folly. Now it is revealed that Transport for London is to pay tube drivers an extra £1800 to try to ensure that they do not go on strike during the actual time the Olympic Games are taking place. This is being given without any guarantees at all, so, I assume there is nothing to stop the tube drivers demanding more as the day approaches. If we can pay extra money to tube drivers why not bus drivers, railway engine drivers, ticket collectors, baggage handlers, etc, etc. Name your job, Can we all join in?

Some people in the London area are renting out their flats and houses at high rents for the duration of the games, while they go off and stay with relatives or go on holiday. How many extra people are coming to London for the Olympics, I know not, but apparently bookings in general are down significantly for the period of the games. It is not helped by the increase in hotel prices.

As part of the Olympic legacy, I suppose we must include the new vast Westfield Shopping Centre which opened yesterday "in the shadow of the Olympic Stadium." Already my cynicism is showing because, apparently according to the Daily Mail, we must not call this monster temple to Mammon a shopping centre but, rather Westfield Stratford City is a "retail environment." There are 7 miles of corridors and shops — 300 of them — 70 restaurants, a 17 screen cinema, a bowling alley and a casino. Do people still go to bowling alleys? And is there money still to be made in casinos? Yes! But not by the punters. The shops were packed out with masses of people on the opening day. People anxious to spend their money and who, presumably were living on benefits or had taken a day off work in order to enjoy this absurd place. Why do we need this "gateway to the Olympic stadium and athletes village"? There are already monster shopping centres at Lakeside, Thurrock and underground at Canary Wharf. There is a limit, surely, to the number of virtually identical shopping environments, packed with the same shops, selling the same products at the same prices. There are suggestions that the new centre will have an adverse effect on the town centres of Romford, Ilford and even Stratford, the borough that is hosting the games. We have a world recession, shops and pubs are closing as never before, the high streets of Britain have 15% of all their shops closed and boarded over. Is this the time to open the biggest shopping mall in Europe within a few miles of two other shopping malls? It shows that once something is allied to the Olympic Games all logic flies out of the window and up the Thames Estuary.

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Olympian Problems

Well, today there were two good sporting stories; both were good because they were filled with interesting facts. They were less good as records of modern life.
The first story was the dramatic day at Old Trafford where Manchester United played Arsenal in a match of records. MU won by 8 - 2. This is one of the biggest ever goal tallies ever achieved in the Premier League and Arsenal have not let in 8 goals in a match since 1896 - just before the era of Arsene Wenger - when they were defeated by Loughborough in Division II. Arsene Wenger is an old misery guts at the best of times but after this disaster he has something to be miserable about and his job is going to be threatened, no matter how good his past record. This season has started so badly for Arsenal that it is possible to be almost sympathetic. They have lost two key players who wanted to leave and some of their star players are suspended or injured. So Old Misery Guts Clouseau has played with a much weakened side. AW says that he is trying to sign new players before the transfer window closes on 31st August and he certainly needs some. One of these is Gary Cahill from Bolton. Bolton don't want to sell him — I think — you can never be sure of anything in these times. He is a good player and Bolton need him but. on the basis of today's disaster, Arsenal's need is greater. But while AW is searching for strikers, it was his defence that spearheaded the disaster. We could blame the young goal keeper, Szczesny — this going to look bad on his CV — who had a torrid time but the primary problems were very poor defence and discipline. Arsenal have had a player sent off in every one of their league fixtures so far this season and it could be argued that today that they were lucky only to receive one dismissal. Many times when MU attacked the Arsenal defence was nowhere to be seen. They may be young players but presumably they were signed up because it was thought that they had talent. It always amazes me that teams fail on the fundamentals. Maybe the Arsenal defence is not good enough to stop Wayne Rooney but they should not be giving away penalties and they should be in the right area when the opposition are attacking. When Crawley Town played MU in the FA Cup they played with total commitment, ran around the field like terriers, trying to win from the kick off and only lost 1-0. It was argued by many that they deserved a draw at least and even Alex Ferguson was very complimentary. But this Arsenal team seemed completely lost, they were so outplayed.
Alex Ferguson has been defending AW's record as a manager, which is right, but surely times are getting bad when AW has the sympathy of Alex Ferguson? AW is having his problems at the moment but he has done a wonderful job at Arsenal over 15 years and he deserves to be allowed the time to sort out this current problem. But that time is running out fast.
MU, on the other hand played a blinder. On this form there is no team in England going to stop them and they will have a very good chance of going all the way in Europe. Wayne Rooney scored his 150th goal for MU and, at 26, we can expect many more in the years ahead. He went on to score a hat-trick and all were scored with the consummate ease of a top professional at the peak of his powers. I don't like Wayne Rooney much as a human-being but he does know how to play football. Even MU do not beat teams by scoring 8 goals very often but today they gave a masterclass of how to play football.
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The second item I want to comment on, concerns [again] the ludicrous expenditure on the London Olympic Games. Nothing will persuade me that we should ever have involved ourselves in this ridiculous extravaganza, but as the bills pile up, the newspapers are now reporting the lavish excess that is to be poured upon the Olympic bureaucracy. And it is a truly Olympian bureaucracy. All officials, especially those at the top, are to be looked after — every one of them — like manic dictators in tin-pot republics who are feted in obscene wealth and grandeur that tries to match their overblown beliefs in their own importance. All these ridiculous men — and they are largely men — will be housed in the most expensive luxury in the most expensive hotels in Central London; they will be provided with chauffeur driven limousines travelling in special lanes on the roads to the Olympic Stadiums, so they do not get held up by plebs trying to fight their way to work in the middle of this needless Olympic congestion; there will be no right turns allowed across their paths; traffic lights will be controlled so that they never have to stop — this electronic modification alone is costing us £12,000,000. These ridiculous men should be made to suffer the traffic just like anyone else. They could have stayed in perfectly acceptable hotels around Canary Wharf, which would have allowed them to get to the stadiums quite easily — they could even have walked. There are 86,000 of these officials and supporting sponsors from Coca Cola and the like who will be given this absurd treatment — all at our expense. The list even includes Sepp Blatter of UEFA and his cohorts. What have they to do with the Olympic Games? Football at the Olympics is a pretty minor activity. All of this rubbish is apparently written into the terms and conditions of the contract we signed when we got the games — it was even written into the enquiry document against which we bid.
The absurdity does not end here with their thousands of petty plutocrats, bureaucrats and hangers-on being ferried around London. No! We have to make it clear that none of this applies to the athletes. They will have to travel by bus or on their bikes.
As Richard Littlejohn is prone to say — you can't make it up!
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Failings In Education

There are many people about this week telling us why the riots and looting across England occurred and what should be done to correct the faults in our society. Everyone is keen to find a quick fix — that will be the preferred solution. But no quick fix will work; the problems are far too deep-seated for that. Dominic Lawson writing in The Independent makes some valid points the central theme of which is the failure of education. Today, this year's A Level results were published and — predictably — the pass rate rose again; this has happened for the last 29 years in a row. It is not believable. Even more it is not believable because employers are complaining about the poor educational standards of school leavers. Lawson provides a statistic that suggests that 40% of black boys leave school with a reading age of seven. That is bad enough but it gets worse. Even with our immigration rates whites are still a majority and among this majority 63% of boys from working class homes also leave school with a reading age of seven. Some of this educational failing is obvious from the words spoken by some of those arrested in the riots. They can hardly string a sentence together and are obviously incapable of any slightly sophisticated reasoning abilities.

If we are to do anything about our sick society and its atmosphere of violence then we need to start with education. There needs to be some balance in equality of opportunity. Now, to get a good education means that you must come from a rich background. This is not exclusively true but it is not far off. When I was in secondary education, I passed the 11+ exam and went to a grammar school. I became one of the elite. The grammar schools were condemned by the liberal left as being elitist and denying the vast mass of the population the same educational chances that I got in a grammar school. And so they abolished the grammar schools. Everyone would go to comprehensive schools and all would have the same opportunities. And they did! They had equal opportunities of getting a third rate education. But there is more! Many of the old grammar schools — particularly the better ones — pulled out of the state system and became independent fee paying schools. They still provided excellent education and along with the old public schools [Eton, Harrow, Winchester and the rest] they educated boys and girls to much higher standards than any state comprehensive. In 2010, about half-a-dozen independent schools send more students to Oxford and Cambridge than 2,000 comprehensives. Now there is true elitism in education but it is an elitism determined by wealth. Every year the exam results get massaged to make things look good and more and more kids are sent to poor universities to spend their money on useless courses in subjects that don't matter and get qualifications that no one wants. The politicians of the Establishment refuse to do anything about it and get all their kids educated privately. All of this needs to change. We need to again expand grammar schools and give working class kids the chance that is now totally denied to them. We must remove this two tier education system. We should also cut down on the drive to send everyone to university and concentrate on getting people to A Level with proper qualifications in proper subjects. Then give them a real choice between university education or occupational apprenticeships. No longer will it be acceptable for children not to read fluently or to be unable to express their thoughts with clarity and understanding. And they must be mathematically literate as well.

This country has always been run by the wealthy. After the 1944 Education Act that started to change. We had grammar school educated kids from ordinary backgrounds finding their way to the top — the days of Harold Wilson, Ted Heath and Margaret Thatcher. Now this route through the grammar schools is almost totally sealed off [one or two grammar schools still remain]. Now the country is run by the rich, for the rich and with the rich having all the connections into the corridors of power to ensure that nothing changes.

The indiscipline in schools and homes has to be tackled. It is not acceptable for children not to be chastised and infrequently but if necessary, beaten. The teachers who complain about violence and chaos in the classrooms should remember that it was their colleagues in the 1950s and 1970s who fought to eliminate corporal punishment from all schools, when we knew that it was only the threat of violence that kept order.

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News From Another Planet

While England has been suffering vandalism, riots and looting, the wold's stock markets have been collapsing. The FTSE 100 index has fallen 1000 points in a week, This has a terrible effect on confidence, our savings and is particularly disastrous for people about to retire. The rest of us hope that the markets will recover over time. But something that has dropped 20% in a month may take a year or more to recover and that assumes that the fundamental cause of the troubles will be addressed. And that is not looking very likely.

On this side of the Atlantic the EU is talking about all kinds of methods of supporting the Euro. In the end it will collapse but politicians will spend billions of tax payers money in order to save their pet project. Every proposal that involves extending more credit to countries around the Mediterranean in order to give them time to pay off their debts only kicks the can down the road. To pay off the debts they need to cut spending and increase taxation. Increased taxation tends to depress the economy and is unpopular with electorates. To increase tax collection and reduce benefits spending, the economy needs to expand. There is little sign of economies expanding at the moment and more tax will give less growth - which means less tax income. Many countries like Greece, Ireland and Portugal have debts so big it is unlikely that they can ever pay back. They will default. Lending them more money just puts off the evil day and makes the disaster worse.

Britain is trying to cut debts — albeit very slowly but we also need growth and more tax income.

In the USA things are bad. The government of Obama has spent weeks and weeks arguing and posturing with Congress on the matter of debt limit. Not content with borrowing $14.5 trillion, the government wants to add up to $2.5 trillion to its borrowing limit. The whole pantomime — and it has been a pantomime — has been about presentation for next year's presidential election. Who the Republican candidate will be is not known yet but there is a great possibility that it will be some nutter from the Tea Party wing of the GOP. They want less Washington spending, less government spending and much lower taxes. It was they who led the opposition to Obama's health care reforms — which previously excluded 42 million Americans from getting treatment. At present the Federal government borrows $1 of every $2 it spends. This is totally unsustainable. On top of that there is a vast private debt which is acting as another great block on economic growth. The whole mess linked to the buggering about by the politicians has led to Standard & Poor down-grading the US credit rating from AAA to AA+. This has never happened before in American history. Instead of facing up to it Obama blames Bush and Europe tells everyone that America is still the greatest and will always be a triple A nation. But American government is so atrocious and corrupt. It spends vast sums on armaments so that it can keep making military interventions, tries to spend too little on social services, taxes the poor and protects the rich. Last weekend, after Obama had made his statement on the AAA rating of the USA, he went off to a fund raising dinner which charged $35,000 per plate for people to contribute to the Democratic Party. There were no poor people there and those diners will want paying back at some time. Is not that corruption?

As my title says this all sounds like reports from another planet.

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Our Sick Society

Tonight, things are fairly quiet on the streets of London's Boroughs and in Birmingham, Wolverhampton, Coventry, Manchester, Leeds, Liverpool, Bristol and Gloucester. Over the last few days all of these places have had rioting, vandalism, violence and looting. Houses, shops, offices, restaurants and even a furniture shop in Croydon have been burned in an orgy of violence, and destruction. In Birmingham three men standing on the street to help protect their property were deliberately targeted, knocked down and killed by a car. The driver, I am glad to say, has been arrested and charged with murder. Throughout the length and breadth of England [so far nothing has happened in Wales, Scotland or Northern Ireland] there has been mass destruction and shops and other premises have been boarded up, locked and abandoned as decent people have tried to avoid this orgy of destruction. But throughout the nights of disorder, looting and mayhem, the most sickening image [see above] has been that of the Malaysian student in Croydon who was dragged from his bike, thrown to the ground, his jaw broken and who then crawled to the side of the pavement to escape. As he sat against the wall with blood running from his mouth and all over his hands, a man went to help him to his feet. But the man was no Good Samaritan. As he lifted the small student to his feet there were hands unzipping his rucksack and robbing him. It is an image that has gone around the world. It makes me ashamed of my country. That there are people who exist in our society who are scum of the lowest order who have no morals and not even a small spark of decency. There were others who boasted about their robbing the shops, of being free to do what they liked to spite the police and the "rich people." But it is not just rich people. They have taken and destroyed the lives and the belongings of ordinary people. David Cameron has said that there are pockets of our society that are sick and he is right.

But what can we do to put these problems right? It is not an easy question to answer. Some of the young men — and they are mainly men — who have appeared in court today were not from deprived backgrounds, living on the streets, unemployed, ill-educated and useless. One was a teaching assistant who works in a school giving children guidance on living in the modern world; some were university students; some were in well-paid jobs. There were, of course, many of the usual suspects — men who have been before the courts before for theft and GBH and often part of the gang culture. Why do such things happen?

I believe that there is a fundamental problem — or even a series of fundamental problems — that blights our society and it begins with parenting and primary schools. There are children who arrive at primary schools who have not even been toilet trained by their utterly useless parents. Those parents believe that society is responsible for doing everything. They take no responsibility for their kids but are every ready to object if anyone else tries to instill some discipline. Throughout our state schools there is often chaos. The children chat among themselves, use mobile phones sending text messages and so on. They have no educational targets and wallow arrogantly in their own monstrous ignorance. There is not the discipline necessary for ordered and constructive teaching. The standards of behaviours of many children — not all — is abysmal. They reach 16 hardly able to read, write or do sums and we massage the exam results to make it look as though they are properly trained for life. Their culture is one of instant gratification, to have without any labour; to achieve without any ability. Some of these feral youths complain that they cannot get jobs because of the immigration rate. I have grave reservations about our too high immigration rate but immigrants will come into this country to work. They are better qualified and certainly better educated in many cases. I have met many Polish immigrants who have come here to work. And work they do. And they are, almost without exception, very courteous. Many British born teenagers are little better than ignorant, work-shy, lazy, arrogant youths who are almost unemployable.

But the problem goes further. Throughout our society there is an atmosphere of violence in almost every aspect of our lives. We have people killed in road rage incidents; violence on football fields and rugby fields that goes lightly punished or in far too many cases unpunished; disputes between neighbours often lead to violence because far too many people take the attitude that they will do whatever they like, when they like and if you don't like it, then "F*** You!" We could go on and on about violent attacks on teachers by pupils and parents; about policemen taken to court and often losing their jobs because they clipped a young thug around the ear.

David Cameron is promising action. What will happen, I do not know, but what is essential is that the perpetrators of the criminality are caught, they are convicted and, without exception they are given prison sentences. If we have to build more prisons, let us build more prisons — at least it will create some more jobs via a dose of old fashioned keynesian economics. I tend to take the old Michael Howard attitude to prisons. "Prisons work!" They work because they take the rabble off the streets. It is time that ordinary people who have a more robust attitude to revenge and retribution were taken more seriously. A poll tonight has 68% of respondents saying that the problems of the last few days were caused by gang culture and criminality; only 8% blamed government cuts. Government cuts is the excuse of the Labour left and the beans and sandals brigade who got us into this mess through their sloppy liberalism over the last 50years.

There are many other things wrong with our society. There is a vast gulf between the standards of living of the rich and that of the huddled masses. I have said many times that it is wrong for bankers and their like to be paid annual salaries [with bonuses] that are more than 10x those of the average person. In some cases more than 100x as much. The education system does not work. Too many people go to university doing pointless subjects and landing themselves with debts of £25,000+ which they will never be able to pay off and which will stymie their chances of getting a mortgage or providing themselves with an adequate pension. These are all matters which the government must address. But at present there is precious little evidence that they will do so.

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An Olympic Joke

Patrick Collins in today's Mail on Sunday tells us that he is confident that next year we will all agree what a wonderful thing it will be to have the Olympic Games in London and we will all rejoice. No we will not. I may be in a minority — although I know that former editor of The Times, Simon Jenkins is with me — but I still think that these games are a waste of money. So far the powers that be have accepted that they will cost £9,500,000.000, although there are suggestions that there are various extras — like transport links, etc — which may push the cost to £12,000,000,000. Astonishing, sport at almost £1 billion PER DAY. But its the legacy that will count; all the extra sports and regeneration of the east end. You can get a lot of serious regeneration for a lot less than £10 billion. David Cameron says its the most important thing happening next year. No, it's not! The most important thing that should be happening next year is that the bloody government gets its act together and makes real progress in re-building our country, sorting out the banks, moving us away from Europe, making the NHS more efficient, ending our involvement in Afghanistan and Libya, sorting out our ridiculous defence mess, putting aeroplanes on aircraft carriers and so on.

Now we are putting on shows for the count-down — just 363 days to go — and Sebastian Coe is becoming more annoying than ever. But this week's monstrous absurdity is the saga of the mascots. These ridiculous things — I refuse to give them a connection with humanity — designed by a completely inebriated, mad cartoonist, one of the last employees of a now defunct company dedicated to marketing the absurd and bent on one last act of revenge, designed these mascots, to look like Mr Blobby with a George Foreman griller for a head. What are they supposed to represent? Perhaps some one-eyed psychodelic Cyclops intended to make us lose all contact with reality. I suppose that when we think of the bill, we have already done that! Now the mascots are available to tour the country — are there just two of them or have LOCOG got several pairs. They can visit your school on payment of a simple fee of £850 [for the two]. These things have names, Wenlock and Mandeville and were, we are told, created to "connect young people with sport."" ?????? If any school or charity is mad enough to oblige by paying this exorbitant fee, they can be assured that these creatures will appear and the actors that fill the suits will "behave in character" — but they are not allowed to speak to the children. Perhaps they think that any child suddenly being addressed by a mouthless, one-eyed thing may have hysterics. The fee includes for assistance in helping the pair to "manoeuvre" in their silly suits as well as the cost of transport and public liability insurance. It is rather odd that a pair of mascots intended to make young [very young] people connect with sport are, apparently, incapable of movement without assistance.

Oh, by-the-way, schools or charities in Scotland and Ireland will have to pay extra. For visiting such remote locations the cost rises to £2,450. A wag — who clearly does not understand these things — has suggested that they just hire out the costumes to the schools and let some local amateurs put on the costumes and parade around the schools. Not acceptable, the LOCOG say because "Mandeville and Wenlock have whole characters, so it is important that we use professional actors so they follow through with these characters at appearances." How can a plastic and fibre blob thing with a griller for a head, one eye and no mouth have a"character"? And which professional actor is going to put playing Mandeville or Wenlock on his [or her, I suppose, who knows] CV.

These Olympics are already beyond the joke. What will happen next?

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Death in Norway

Well, we now have, sadly, a new name to add to the rather limited list of famous Norwegians. Perhaps, I should say infamous Norwegians; but there is no doubt that Anders Behring Breivik's name will go into the record books for the fulfilment of a deed that will live with other horrors in the annals of infamy. He killed about 70 people last Friday with a bomb and a gun. There are many questions being asked about why it happened and politicians across Europe and the rest of the world have expressed their deep sympathy for the friends and families of those killed. Also, they have announced their intentions of looking at security in their own countries. But in condemning Breivik and expressing sympathy — no doubt honestly intended — they are just going through the motions. They say what they have to say and then they carry on as before. They do this through a mixture of arrogance, complacency, ignorance, incompetence and through a complete inability of politicians across Europe to understand the concerns of ordinary people. Anders Breivik cannot be considered as an ordinary person. Ordinary persons do not decide that they have to execute large numbers of other people but the concerns expressed in Breivik's manefesto should not just be dismissed. Anders Breivik is clearly, an intelligent man and he has produced a 1500 page manifesto that sets out his beliefs "2083 A European Declaration of Independence". It is a rambling document — at 1500 pages this could hardly be avoided — that has obviously taken some considerable time to compile. He has been nurturing his grievances for at least 10 years until finally he snapped and in his disturbed mind he concluded that he had to act. But why kill so many innocent young people? It seems to be just that to him they were representative of the political classes of the future who would follow the unacceptable pathways that were destroying his country's character. It is easy to dismiss him as just another nutter — albeit a nutter with a gun. But that would be dangerous complacency. The fact is that there are men like Anders Breivik in every country in Europe — and in the USA — and we should be shocked not only by what he has done but by the fact that it has nor happened somewhere before. Clearly, the extreme demonstration of his feelings must be condemned; no political creed can demand and justify such slaughter. But, perhaps such things have happened before. Several members of extremist organisations have gone on the rampage in the past; but here the difference is that the perpetrator has set out his political creed for all to judge before he went out to put his tortured beliefs into operation. Like Adolph Hitler sitting in prison composing Mein Kampf, Anders Breivik has spent years collecting evidence and writing down the basis for his beliefs, prime among which is a conviction that Islam is a pernicious evil that must be destroyed. In many ways this manifesto is like Mein Kampf. Hitler wanted initially to call his book "Four & A Half Years of Struggle Against Lies, Stupidity and Cowardice" but he was persuaded that Mein Kampf was rather more memorable. Hitler's lies, stupidity and cowardice are a denunciation of the failings of politicians after World War I and his belief that many of the problems of Germany were caused by Jews. In the same way, Breivik believes that governments - as well as others - have failed in Europe in the years since World War II. They have collectively operated a creed of political correctness, of Marxist ideology, of spineless liberalism, of multiculturalism, have abandoned Christianity and have failed to control the immigration that has led to the Islamification of society - not just in Norway but across Europe. Whether the politicians like it or not, I believe that many people in Europe hold similar views.

Britain has suffered from mass immigration particularly since 1997. Many of these immigrants have religious beliefs that are alien to us and nothing has been done to integrate them into our society. This immigration continues, even after our Prime Minister has promised change and has said publicly that multiculturalism has failed. We have laws that make racial discrimination an offence but the laws are applied entirely for the benefit of minorities. We have Muslim youths so alienated against our society that even as they are British citizens they demonstrate on the streets against our soldiers returning from doing their duty in Iraq and Afghanistan. We know already that some of these alienated youths even go on to carry out bombings, having been trained to kill in camps in Afghanistan and Pakistan. They are watched by security services but still more Muslims are allowed into the country — some with extremist anti-Western views that are already known. We have particular problems because we had an Empire and many citizens of former colonies wish to come to England. Norway had no such empire and Anders Brievik considers this an added reason why Norway should not have to suffer Islamification. He is concerned also at the decline in moral standards over the last 50 or 60 years; the increases in muggings and robberies; the increased use of drugs; the acceptance of homosexuality; the acceptance of easy access to pornography.

Anders Brievik is a Christian with beliefs close to fundamentalists and this inevitably confuses his arguments. He has ideas that can be argued but his rambling exposition of his manifesto suggests the tortured mind that has probably resulted from years of feeling impotent, unable to halt what he sees as the destruction of Nordic society.

I have little time for any organised religions. Everywhere they are like cancers in society. Christians and Muslims have argued and fought for a thousand years and the medieval nonsense of their religious dogmas ignites conflict. They can't even agree amongst themselves. Catholics and Protestants have justified slaughter in the name of their brand of Christianity. Even now there are walls still dividing Protestant from Catholic in Northern Ireland and people are killed in the name of religion. Is there any sense in perpetuating a friction that dates back to William of Orange who died more than 300 years ago? The Church of England seems to be run from another planet as they argue about women bishops and gay priests while the structure collapses around them and the Archbishop of Canterbury becomes more and more like a retired old social worker.

Like everyone, I express my sympathy for all who have lost family and friends last Friday in Norway. I cannot support the conclusions and consequences of Anders Brievik but I understand the frustrations. I am proud to be British but also I am ashamed at the way that our country has been allowed to decline. Our industries are almost all dead; bankers rob the people of their hard earned cash while they wallow in obscene wealth; the government wants a resurrection of our manufacturing base but does little to support manufacturers and un-regulated immigration gives three out of every four new jobs to foreigners.

Anders Breivik may be declared insane but it is easy to understand what drove him to that state.

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Mark Cavendish

While I am still getting over the enjoyment of this year's Tour de France, there are one or two things that are worthy of more comment.
Some of the newspapers this week-end have been coming to realise just what fantastic athletes the road racing bikers are. Patrick Collins in the Mail on Sunday recalled labouring up into the Alps some years ago, in a Volvo in steaming heat with the car struggling to keep going as it got hotter and hotter and the atmosphere got thinner and thinner, in order to cover a stage of the Tour de France. When he got to site and sat and watched he saw these bike men coming up the side of the mountain with what he thought was comparative ease. I think he may have over-egged it a bit here. Mark Cavendish after the two Alpine stages where he lost points said, "Man, that was really hard." And if Cav' says that, I am prepared to believe him. This year the Tour de France followed roads through the Alps — goat tracks Andy Schleck called them — to a height of 2,700 metres — in old British money that is 8,910 feet — or an altitude of double the height of Britain's highest mountain. That is some climb and no one who is not an awesome athlete could do it.
It is interesting to read some of the reports of the amateur riders who try one of the stages each year. The organisers of the Tour de France set up, each year, a single stage event that is open to all amateurs. Anything up to 2,000 trained loonies have a go. Since there are so many, they are sent off in groups well spread out and they race against the clock. Many do not finish the course but also, many do. One writer wrote his report in one of the national newspapers last year. He was a keen amateur cyclist and he trained for this special one day for more than six months putting in lots of miles and gym workouts. He completed the course. When he got off his bike, he was on the verge of total collapse, totally exhausted. He told us that he had taken twice as long as the riders would do in the race and the idea that he would get out of bed the following morning and do it all again was pure fantasy. He held the riders in awe ever after.
David Millar, the British rider who completed this year's Tour in 76th place [out of 168 finishers] said yesterday that we do not appreciate just how good is Mark Cavendish. He is, said Millar, "the greatest sprinter in cycling history." And for such an achievement he may get a mention in a small column a few pages away from the back of a national newspaper. He is fantastic. There is no doubt about that and in the last 2 years he has matured immensely. No longer does he behave like the truculent teenager and, always, he gives enormous credit to his team of lead-out men who get him to the right place to rocket him towards the finishing line. To see him take off in a bunch sprint shows just how great he is. The best cyclists in the world are left standing. So far he has 20 stage wins to his credit and experts are predicting that he will one day exceed the 34 stage wins of Eddie Merckx - the greatest bike rider of all time. I look in the sports pages of newspapers and see acres of rubbish about footballers being transferred from here to there, about the sex lives of footballers, about the ridiculous wages of footballers, etc, etc. And this happens even during that brief respite of no football in July. But mention of a great performer like Cavendish is scant. Perhaps after his green jersey win he will get more attention. But, I suppose it will be mostly about wags!
What will happen to Cavendish and his team next year is unknown. He is out of contract and HTC Highroad have not yet committed to sponsoring the team in the future. Cavendish has indicated that he wants the team to stay together. That may not be easy if HTC cannot collect the resources to allow them to continue this sponsorship. It may be, of course, that the problem is agreeing contracts with a team of riders who have now become very valuable in world cycling.
Luckily, there are many young men [and women] who are being inspired by the likes of Mark Cavendish, Bradley Wiggins, David Millar and, on the track, Chris Hoyle, Graeme Obree, and Victoria Pendleton. bike riding in all its forms is becoming more and more popular, encouragingly, as a break from the brutal corruption seen in football.
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