Abandon All Hope?

Although I tell you that I intend to post more often on this blog, the reality is that I do not.  So many things can become victims of the failure of good intentions.  I do suffer from depression; not in the clinical sense, you understand; but in the sense of a complete lack of faith in our government and institutions.  I do not mean government in the simple sense of David Cameron and Nick Clegg and their associates — although that is depressing enough — but in the sense of everyone who is supposed to be in charge of something — the government, of course, but also the banks, local government, the schools, the NHS, everything.  Nothing works as it should and/or it costs a fortune.

At the head of our country is an Establishment that protects itself, that protects its wealth, that seems oblivious to the mess that lies around them.  We now have a cabinet of rich public school boys who have been career politicians for almost the whole of their lives.  The input of experience is severely limited almost to the point where nothing is known of the world outside the social circle of Old Etonians.  For years politicians have invented policies based on nonsense and fallacies.  Investment bankers play with huge amounts of our money to make more for themselves without really understanding what they are doing.  If train drivers and airline pilots did their jobs with the levels of competence achieved by the bankers there would be dead bodies all over the planet.  The government of this country has over the last 30 years piled up vast debts to the point where there is little chance of them ever being repaid.  Some will argue that this does not matter because many of our debts are long-term and for the most part are internal debts.  But we need $45 billion per year to finance these debts.  It is an on-going investment in waste.  So they print money, wreck the currency, keep interest rates at virtually zero per cent in order, in the long term, to inflate away the debts.  It could possibly work — although it is a policy of despair — if we stopped piling up more debt.  Yet last year, we increased the accumulated debt by £120 billion; we will add another £120 billion this year; and yet another £120 billion next year.  If we retain our credit-worthiness, that extra borrowing over these three years alone will add £9 billion to our annual interest payments.  The amount that the government borrows is increased every year because it needs more and more just to pay off the annual interest charges.  It is absurd.  They need to cut spending by 25%.  Now!  They are not doing anything at all.  They shuffle the numbers about every year but overall the situation just gets worse and worse.

In its attempts to stem the floods, the government is attempting to cut expenditure and has made tens of thousands of public sector workers redundant.  But these displaced workers cease paying taxes and need unemployment benefits.  So the government balance sheet does not improve much.

What can be done?

First the government must collect all their taxes.  There are armies of people in all kinds of jobs working for cash in hand and no VAT or income tax — particularly this is a problem in the building trades.  These taxes must be collected.  All corporate taxes must be collected.  It is totally unacceptable to have senior managers in HMRC coming to cosy agreements over dinner in 5 star hotels and letting large international companies get away with not paying hundreds of millions in tax.  Nor should big multi-nationals get away with not paying taxes to anyone on this planet.  That corporate monster Apple was reported last week as having attained that Nirvana where it had a partner company that had no staff, no directors, turned over about $1.5 billion per year yet was domiciled in no country whatsoever and paid no tax to anyone.

In addition to collecting taxes the government must cut spending.  Inevitably this will put more public sector workers out of work.  New jobs need to be generated to get the economy moving again and to get people earning wages.  Top priority should be the construction industry.  Building houses and roads cannot be exported abroad no matter how much the financial speculators would like to do so.  And building houses generates jobs making the building materials, windows, door, kitchens, bathroom, etc.  We need to build in excess of 220,000 houses per year to meet demand and bring down the price of houses to the point where young people can afford them.  This means cutting house prices by at least 25%.  This will leave some owners with negative equity and the government needs to address this problem  Once anyone has bought their home, its price does not matter except to those who will inherit.  I read an article in The Times yesterday which pointed out that if the price of food had increased as the price of houses had in the last forty years, a chicken would now cost £50 and a loaf of bread nearly £5.  The price of houses is absurd.

I could go on about the youth unemployment rate; where the youngest and fittest members of our community are educated but unemployed, already lumbered with debts because their university education involved loans not grants and demanded payment of ever increasing tuition fees which in my day were paid by the government.  Government demands ever more payments in taxes but provides less services.  The roads are in a terrible state; broken and jammed up they are another millstone around the neck of our economy.

People around the world are becoming more disenchanted with their rulers.  Everywhere corruption in some form is rife.  Politicians become ever more obsessed with surveillance.  At the week-end, Max Hastings in the Daily Mail asked if democracy was dying.  It is certainly not in good health.  I was optimistic when we achieved a coalition government in 2010 but the reality has been a failure.  There is a lack of commitment to pulling together and a feeling in the two parties that they need to set out their display windows for the election in 2015.  

In the USA, Mr Obama may be the first black president but there will be little else for us to remember him by.  In operation he has been little better than George W Bush.

Is it surprising that people are rioting in the streets or voting for fringe political parties.  What will become of us?  Has Britain no Churchill or Attlee waiting in the wings?

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Cyprus — Things Get Worse

The saga of the Cyprus banks does not get any better.  Last night the President, Nicos Anastasiades told us that his country had come "a breath away from economic collapse."  He did not explain exactly how he is defining economic collapse?  But we are told that the banks will remain closed until Thursday — ie for two weeks — unless they extend this again to an even later date.  This should give the government plenty of time to make up their collective mind about how much bail out money they will need to steal from bond holders and those depositors with more than €100,000 sitting in a Cyprus bank.  What condition are a country's finances in when the government needs to close the banks for two weeks or so while plundering the accounts of depositors in order to grab as much money as they need to finance government debts.  Is this but "a breath away from economic collapse"?  They still have not fully detailed what restrictions they will impose to stop everybody moving their money to somewhere safer when the banks are finally allowed to re-open.  Many governments are incompetent, some are corrupt but few take these qualities to the point of a criminal confiscation of their citizens' money.  And it seems that the idiotic incompetents in Brussels seem to think that the Cyprus model is one to be followed in future bail outs — which will come along sooner or later, as sure as eggs are eggs.  

The euro is a currency in a total mess and exists now only to provide Germany — the Euro-Banker — with a cheap currency to subsidize its exports — by some 30% perhaps. 

What next for this sad soap opera?

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When Is A Nation Bankrupt?

What does the world really think about the euro?  This morning it is announced that Cyprus has come to an agreement with the EU, the European Central Bank and the IMF in Brussels that will provide a bail out for that blighted country.  But what has actually happened?  The EU will provide a €10 billion bail out while the Cyprus government contributes €6 biilion by robbing the deposits in the island's banks.  The second largest bank — Laiki Bank — will be progressively shut down and bond holders and those deposit holders with more than €100,000 on deposit will suffer big losses — perhaps 40% or more of their money.  Under the agreement all deposits of less than €100,000  will be secured — which I suppose does at least abide by one fundamental principal of banking; that the deposits of ordinary people are protected.  There is little else of merit in this deal, which is fundamentally wrong.  It seems that the bankers and politicians are determined to destroy the Cyprus banking system and its dodgy off-shore status. Many of the larger deposits are linked to Russia and money laudering.  If this is true the EU, the ECB and the IMF should have instructed the Cyprus government ages ago to divest themselves of these crooked foreign investments.  Cyprus has been running an over-sized banking system — closely tied to Greece — for years and paid high interest rates that ultimately would become unsustainable.

The Laiki Bank will be split into "good" and "bad" banks — where have we seen this before?  The good assets eventually will be merged into Bank of Cyprus.  Presumably the bad bank bits will be written off — the bond holders and the large depositers?  Large depositers in the Bank of Cyprus - the island's biggest bank - will have to contribute a substantial sum — to be resolved in the near future.  

The Chairman of the Cyprus Parliament's Finance Committee, Nicholas Papadopolous, said the agreement made "no economic sense".  Speaking to the BBC, he said, "We are heading for a deep recession, high unemployment. They wanted to send a message that the Cypriot economy ought to be destroyed, and they've succeeded in a large part - they've destroyed our banking sector,"

We are travelling in uncharted waters now.  The politicians and bureaucrats responsible for inventing the euro are prepared to go to any lengths to protect their pet project.  But we have now gone beyond the limits.  No fundamental rule finance and banking is safe any more.  They believe they can do whatever they like to stay afloat.  Significantly, this "deal" will not be put before the Cyprus Parliament.  How can they get away with that?  The first bail out deal was totally rejected by Parliament and there is every reason to expect that the same would happen to this scheme.  How will the government continue?  Will they dismiss Parliament in the manner of a medieval monarch?  Sooner or later they will be removed from office.  The EU [Germany] cannot impose their selected bureaucrats and/or politicians as managers on any soveriegn nation — at least, not without riots in the streets.

Banks in Cyprus have been closed since last Monday and many businesses are only taking payment in cash.  On Sunday, Bank of Cyprus further limited cash machine withdrawals to 120 euros a day.  With queues growing outside cash machines, Laiki also lowered its daily limit to 100 euros.  The details of the reopening of Cyprus' banks has been discussed today and already it is clear that there will be severe limitations on the ability of deposit holders to withdraw their own cash.  If depositors are not allowed free access there will be trouble in some form or another.  Where in any bank's Terms & Conditions does it state that you may not always be allowed to withdraw your own funds?  The only answer to this is never to deposit funds in any such bank.

Cyprus is only a small country and it is absurd that they have been allowed to get into a mess like this.  I still believe that the euro is doomed and that becomes more certain with each ever more absurd bail out package.  This scheme destroys any credibility for a banking system.  And it must be remembered that it is the same people who got us into this mess who are demanding that Europe wide it will be Joe Public who bails them out.
The latest announcement that has spooked the markets is the suggestion from Holland that the Cyprus model could become the norm for future bail outs.  That large depositors and bond holders can be expected to hand over their money to pay for the sins of politicians and investment bankers.  It is wrong and absurd.  Get your money out and into the boxes under the bed as soon as possible.
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Michael Owen

It has been announced this morning that Michael Owen will retire from playing football at the end of this season.  Fundamentally, it is an acceptance of the inevitable.  Stoke City were unlikely to renew his contract for next season and no other Premier League club wants him any more.  He is only 33 years old and it all sounds like a sad end to his career.  But not so.  Judging by what he has written on his website, this is a considered decision and, I think, the right one.  But we should not forget that Michael Owen is one of the greatest footballers to play for England since the Second World War. 

Born in Chester, Michael Owen played for Liverpool for six years and in 2001 helped them to win the League Cup, FA Cup and Uefa Cup, ending a six-year trophy drought. In total, Owen scored 158 goals in 297 appearances for the Merseyside club before moving to Real Madrid for £8m in 2004, where he was part of the "Galacticos", including Zinedine Zidane, Luis Figo, Roberto Carlos and Raul.

Despite scoring 14 goals in 40 games, it seems that he was less than happy here and returned to England one year later to play for Newcastle United — and by now he was worth £16 m. But it was at Newcastle that he became injury prone and he never again achieved the success of his days at Liverpool. Like many great operatic tenors, great football strikers can be very delicate performers and fabulous athleticism in youth can lead to damage in mi-career and a long decline.

During four years at Newcastle, he made only 79 appearances but still managed to score 30 goals.  Newcastle were relegated from the Premier Leagu in 2009 and Michael Owens left on a free transfer to play for Manchester United.  His appearances for his new club were infrequent but when he did play he often impressed.  Nevertheless his career was again blighted by injuries and he moved to Stoke City two years ago. 

But in all the glowing performances when he was at his best, few will compare with that marvelous day of September 1st 2001 when he scored a hat-trick in England's rout of Germany 5 - 1 in Munich.  A football match that we can still remember as thought it were yesterday.  See picture above of him scoring goal number 3

I don't know what he intends to do with the the rest of his life — perhaps he will go horse racing.  But, whatever, I wish him the very best

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Debts Must Be Paid

In these times, every day that passes seems to bring some new reasons to worry about the state of the British economy and particularly the scale of the debts.  Unfortunately, those in power in government and the banks don't seem to worry at all.  Is it because they feel there is no need to worry — like Mr Micawber, they expect something to turn up — or is it that they simply do not understand how serious things are?

The Coalition Government of David Cameron came into power committing itself to tackling the problem of government debt.  A reasonable and essential policy decision when they owed so much.  Cutting the debt is the foundation of their five year programme.  Yet, in spite of all the claims and public speaking and policy programmes, they are achieving nothing.  Just look at the figures.  When they came into office in May of 2010, the government debt was £700,000,000,000 — £700 billion.  If all goes well, when they leave in 2015 that debt will only have increased to £1,400 billion.  Some achievement for a government whose primary policy is to cut their debts.  Such a debt will require interest payments of nearly £100 billion per year — about 15% of total government expenditure.  They will have to cut back on spending on real services and projects in order just to pay the interest on the debts.  It is appalling.  And it is not even complete.  The figures do not take into account an every increasing burden of pay outs to subsidise public sector pensions — already costing £45 billion per year.

In order to eliminate the governments vast debts they must first of all stop spending more than they receive in income.  This is simple domestic economics — I refer to Mr Micawber again.  If expenditure exceeds income, the result is misery.  The government can no longer ring fence any part of the expenditure programme,  The NHS takes 20% of all government spending.  During the Labour years spending on the NHS doubled but 70% of that extra spending went on administration — plus interest payments on PFI deals that leave hospitals with 30 year debts while keeping the numbers hidden from government balance sheets.  Every hospital bed now has its own administrator.  Surely considerable savings could be made here and the service made both more efficient and more effective!  Further, the government via HMRC must try harder to collect all its taxes.  There is far too much avoidance and evasion.  From plumbers and builders to bankers and large corporations, they are all evading their taxes.  Only yesterday, it was revealed that many employees — including teachers and other public servants — are paid via off-shore companies to avoid NI deductions.  It has to be stopped. Osborne cannot continue protecting his mates in the City, allowing them to pay themslevs millions every year in pay, bonuses and perks and then shuffle it all off to the Cayman Isles.  Then in some areas the government needs to increase its tax rates.  They have to get the difference between income and expenditure to zero — and then set about tackling the rest of the debt.  They have to face up to the public sector pension plans.  I have no problem with public sector workers having gold -plated pensions — provided they pay for them.

The present Bank of England programmes of printing money devalues the currency, stokes up inflation and leads us towards bankcruptcy.  Greece, Portugal and Ireland have been bailed out by the ECB — and hence the Germans.  But when we go bust there is no-one to help us.  We have to sort out our own debt problems.
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Oscar Pistorius

The story that has headed the front pages of many newspapers in recent weeks has been that of Oscar Pistorius killing his girl friend Reeva Steenkamp in his house on the night of the 14th February.  The story is well-known but we still do not know the detailed truth of how this terrible tragedy occurred.
Pistorius has claimed that he thought that the noises in the bathroom and toilet were made by a burglar breaking into the house.  Many ask why did he not make absolutely sure who it was before he discharged four bullets?  We can ask this question in the comparative security of a country in Western Europe; it is not so easy in South Africa.  The annual murder rate in the UK is 1.2 per 100,000 or a total in 2012 of 722 people.  In South Africa the rate is 31.8 per 100,000 or 15,940 in 2012.  South Africa is not the worst place on Earth for murders but it is not far off.  The highest rate is in the Ivory Coast with a rate of 56.9 per 100,000.
Crime in South Africa is bad and well-known, rich, white people — as well as black — like Pistorius, are particularly at risk.  His disability makes things marginally worse.  In spite of walled estates and permanent guards, break-ins are not uncommon.  In The Sunday Times last week, Margie Orford, the London born author who attended university in Cape Town and has spent the last ten years living in South Africa, explained the pervasive fear of violence there.  She set out as an investigative journalist to "ascertain the facts about violence in South Africa."   Violence is endemic and she wondered if she — like Pistorius — should sleep with a gun under her pillow.  The police colonel with whom she discussed this asked a simple question, "If you woke up at night and heard a noise or saw someone moving down the passage, what would you do?"  "I would ask who was there," she replied.  The colonel expressed the opinion that if an intruder had got into the house he would already have shot her — so having a gun would make no difference.  "Better not to have a gun and shoot your husband by mistake."
This remark is uncanny in the Pistorius context.  It is exactly what he suggests happened.  In spite of his protected home and life style, like most South Africans he was paranoid about the risks of violent crime.  And the event that happened in Pistorius's home was and is not unique.  Margie Orford reports that only a few months ago a little girl in Johannesburg got out of bed during the night to get some water.  Her father thought she was an intruder and shot her dead.
It seems that in that blighted country, if you are to keep a gun in the house for your own protection then you have to react on the basis of shoot first and ask questions afterwards.  Perhaps the Pestorius version of what happened really is true.  So far the police have admitted that they found nothing at the scene to contradict his story.  Whatever the truth, it is a tragedy for all involved.  Obviously for Reeva Steenkamp but also for a man who, in spite of his disability, achieved so much and raised the status of para-athletes around the world.  He will have to live with this for the rest of his life.  I hope that one day he will succeed.
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Good-bye Crawley

I have posted nothing on here for the last 4 months.  I have been totally pre-occupied with moving house.  This is an activity that I would not recommend to anyone.  It is stressful and expensive.  It is not my intention to move ever again except if I am carted away to a care home — not an enticing prospect.  I have lived in Crawley in West Sussex for 48 years and in the same house for 35 years.  When I first went to the town in 1964, it was an exciting place to be.  Many people were appreciative life in one of the new towns built to rehouse Londoners who had been bombed out in WWII or had lived through the Depression in ungodly slums.  Many mistakes were made in planning the new towns but there were still many things they got right.  The towns were run by the Commission for the New Towns — a benevolent dictatorship that generally did a good job until they were abolished by the Iron Lady.  I went to Crawley to work for what was then The APV Co Ltd. — a family business that had grown into a fair-sized international organisation as engineers for the Dairy, Brewing and Process Industries.  When I started working I had nowhere to live and for a few week I stayed in the staff club, Jordans, an 18th century converted barn and house that was Grade II listed and had very low ceilings - picture above.  Then I moved into lodgings in the box room of a 1950s semi.  Then I had a bed-sit in a large detached house near the gold club.  My landlady was a lovely woman who lived alone except for one or two lodgers who boosted her income a bit and provided some company .  She was in her mid-seventies then and must now have been long dead. 

The Commission for the New Towns had a policy of allowing "key" workers to jump the housing queue and after a year or two I was able to get a single bedroom maisonette and I lived there until I bought my house in 1977.  Now I have left there and moved back to my home county of Lancashire in a house about 2.5 miles from where I was born.  I will tell you about the move in my next blog.

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Touring On Drugs

Yesterday, the organizers of the Tour de France brought everyone together in Paris to launch the programme leading to the competition for the 100th Tour in 2013.  For the first time in many a year it will be run entirely in France, beginning in Corsica.  It is October 2012 and still the Lance Armstrong saga continues.  Every day there is some new piece of nonsense as the cant and hypocrisy proceeds unabated.  Now the UCI has officially stripped Lance Armstrong of his seven Tour de France wins and, presumably, they will strip him of every other race win as well.  Floyd Landis has been stripped of his win in 2006 — he did fail drugs tests.  On Monday, Pat McQuaid, the President of UCI called Tyler Hamilton and Floyd Landis "scumbags" for testifying against Lance Armstrong to the United States Anti-Doping Agency (USADA),  Tyler Hamilton has demanded that McQuaid resigns; a call echoed by Greg LeMond, now the only American who is still in possession of wins in the Tour de France.  But McQuaid has a point.  Lance Armstrong is being made No.1 scapegoat for all drug users in the Tour de France and other cycling events.  Slowly, everyone seems to be coming round to the realization that when Armstrong was winning, there were very few bike riders in long distance road racing who were not using drugs.  They cannot all argue that Armstrong bullied them into using drugs.  Floyd Landis got caught and after protesting his innocence for years finally admitted to drug use and joined the army of testifiers against Armstrong.  Tyler Hamilton was a rider for whom I used to have quite a lot of respect after he got on his bike after a crash on day one in the Tour de France and rode for three weeks all the way back to Paris with a broken collar bone — coming 4th overall in the race.   Now he has testified against his team-mate, Armstrong, and written a book about his experiences as a drug user; a book, which will put him in a good light, will bring him lots of money and, with his testimony gets him off the hook with USADA. It is not a record of high minded disinterested moral principles.There are one or two honourable men who have defended Lance Armstrong.  First among these is Alberto Contador.  Contador rode alongside Armstrong in the Astana Team in 2009, when he [Contador] won the race.  Armstrong had, said Contador, left a lasting legacy in the sport and he criticized the USADA report which relied entirely on testimonies from other riders, anxious to get themselves off the hook.  "Right now people are talking about Lance but there has not been any new test evidence or anything", Contador added.  Condemnation of Armstrong "is based exclusively on witness statements that could have been made in 2005.""What I do know is that if cycling is popular in the USA, it's thanks to him.  If they know over there what the Tour is, it's thanks to him.  If there are top-level teams and races in his country, it's thanks to him."Contador won the Tour de France in 2007 and 2009 but had his 2010 victory struck from the record books after testing positive for a tiny amount of clenbuterol — an amount so tiny that it would not have improved the performance of a gnat.Now various people are demanding that Armstrong pays back his prize-money and various sponsors are demanding their money back.  On the basis that all publicity is good publicity, on what basis do these sponsors think the money should be returned?  Before the great drugs scandal at the Tour de France in 1998, I had never heard of Festina.  And I believe that all the sponsors will have got value from Armstrong.Yesterday, in The Times, Matthew Syed — Sports Feature Writer of the Year — suggested that, if Lance Armstrong was being asked to pay his money back, then so should a lot of other riders.  He particularly drew attention to David Millar — who has become surrounded by his own cloud of self-generated self-righteousness, in campaigning against drugs.   When he was first accused of drug use, he, like all drug users, protested his innocence with great rigour.  When his defence became unsustainable, Millar wrote a best-selling book about his experiences with drug use — and obviously made money out of it.  In 2003, before he started using EPO, he was earning about £250,000 per year.  On EPO, his earnings went up to £650,000 per year — plus more endorsements, etc.
Bike riders used and probably still do use drugs.  I do not think any the less of them for that and neither, I suspect, does Joe Public.  Recent interviews with the man in the street have indicated that most people have assumed for years that bike riders used drugs.  So what?  Bodybuilders use drugs.  Nobody who gets to the point of stepping on stage in a bodybuilding contest has got there without drugs.   Why?  Because [a] to be a muscular freak is impossible without drugs and [b] all bodybuilders want to be the best that they can possibly be.  And so, I would argue, do bike riders.  They want to be the best in a sport which makes extraordinary demands on the human body.  If all riders are using drugs, who is cheating?  The only thing that matters is that riders do not damage their health.  No one rides the Tour de France for health reasons.  For the most part using drugs does not make the risks of health damage very much higher.  Were it not for the anti-drugs industry, it would be much easier to ensure that no drug use was detrimental to health.
Lance Armstrong was the best for seven years in a row in an era when everybody was using drugs.  No furore about his use of drugs will change that. 
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Lance Armstrong Was A Great Bike Racer

I feel rather sorry for Lance Armstrong.  That puts me into a minority group right away.  There was a time, not that many years ago, when men who rode bikes for sport were almost unknown off the European continent.  But not any more.  Britain has moved to the forefront of bike racing on road and track.  We now have a group of men and women who are among the best in the world and at the Olympics in Beijing and London we dominated the racing in the velodrome.  Also, bike riding has been on the rise in both North America and in South America.  And there are many top-rated riders from Australia — the 2011 Tour de France was won by Cadel Evans.  But today no other rider has quite the world-wide profile of Lance Armstrong — a man who recovered from testicular cancer and went on to win the Tour de France seven times between 1999 and 2005.  The problem is the revelations concerning his use of performance enhancing drugs.

I have little time for the anti-drugs establishment.  They are concerned not so much with eliminating PE drugs from sport so much as organizing yet more conferences in Geneva, Monte Carlo, Rio de Janeiro and Sidney — among other cities — in order to discuss the matter yet again.  You will note that they avoid places like Rotherham and Scunthorpe — places that  lack the sea or lake-side luxury of the listed cities.  For years, Lance Armstrong has been insisting that he never used PE drugs and he sticks to that line today.  Officially he never failed a drugs test although it is now being suggested that he did and the result was hushed up by somebody of other.  Nevertheless, it is still the case that he has no record of a failed drugs test against his name.  He has been found guilty of PE drug use by USADA as a result of a collection of sworn statements made by at least ten other bike riders who had been in Armstrong's various teams at the same time and tell us that they saw Armstrong both using PE drugs and handing them out to other riders.  All of them have admitted that they also used the drugs over many years but are speaking out now in return for immunity from any further sanctions.

I have always thought that Armstrong used drugs, just as I think lots of other riders used drugs,  When the Festina scandal broke in 1998 and the team lead by Richard Virenque was forced to withdraw from the Tour de France, there was much unrest in the peleton as French police carried out searches in hotel rooms and in team cars and buses.  Lots of stuff was rapidly dumped and poured down the toilet because Festina had been caught doing something that most other teams were doing as well.  No rider who did not use drugs stood any chance of winning anything in the Tour de France.  Armstrong was just one of many.  He got his first win in 1999 as the recovered cancer patient.  Now USADA have taken away his seven wins because he cheated.  Can they do this?  They did not award him the yellow jerseys anyway.  If he is no longer considered a winner over the seven years, who did win?  And was he 100% clean?   There is no answer to that question.  Is the Tour de France and other cycling races now completely drug free?  I doubt it.  

Today, it has been announced that the Dutch bank, Rabobank is to withdraw its sponsorship of a team in the Tour, telling us that "We are no longer convinced that the international professional world of cycling can make this a clean and fair sport," said Rabobank's Bert Bruggink.  He may be right in one sense; that drug use will continue.  Ten years ago when it was very probable that every team was using something, they were on a level playing field.  I am sorry that Rabobank have withdrawn — it may be a good time to cut back on sponsorship expenditure anyway.  There have been drug issues in the past in the Rabobank team without the bank getting too upset about it.  Before the 1998 Tour, I had never heard of Festina; now I know exactly what they are and what they do.  Is it still not true that all publicity is good publicity?

So Armstrong was just one of many, many riders who used drugs.  He may have been aggressive in encouraging other riders to do the same thing but I do not accept the line that they were pure and clean bike riders until they were forced into the dark arts by Armstrong.  If they didn't like it, they could have gone to another team.  But they knew full well that other teams were filled with drug users and Armstrong's teams were the ones that were doing the winning.

Maybe bike riding is cleaner now — drugwise — than it was but in an era of widespread PE drug use, Armstrong was the best rider in the world.   To single him out like this is OTT and achieves very little.  Interestingly, Richard Virenque — many times King of the Mountains — who admitted his drug use during a trial in France in 2000 is still regarded as a hero in his own country and he is still a commentator on bike racing on French TV and radio.  Perhaps the same will eventually happen to Armstrong.  Bike riders are still the most fantastic athletes on the planet, with or without drugs.  Lance Armstrong will still be remembered as a great bike rider long after all the officials of WADA and USADA have been forgotten.

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Experience Counts

I have posted nothing for six weeks.  I can say that I have been busy — which is partly true — but more than anything I have felt overwhelmed by the chaos.  Most of what goes on around us cannot be made up.  The world's economy is in a mess and primarily it is in a mess because of the EU.  The EU is governed by politicians of little ability.  They are all children of the system.  They discussed politics at university; they became political assistants to other politicians; they became representatives in parliament; and finally, they became ministers, rambling around the world meeting other politicians.  Consequently every daft idea dreamed up in every capital in the world becomes the next government policy that will, somehow, be the answer to all our problems.  It never is, of course.  Politicians rarely learn from their mistakes; our burden these days is that many are incapable of learning from their mistakes.  
Around the world, governments are printing money in order, they say, to stimulate the economy.  In fact, it does no such thing; it puts more money into the hands of the bankers who were responsible for much of the mess in the first place.  Printing money is wrong.  It devalues the currency.  If our currencies were supported by a gold standard, they would not be able to get away with printing money.  In Europe, the euro is doomed.  The right thing to do is to get rid of it; not to insist on more economic integration.  The EU is one of those organisations that, if it did not exist, we would not need to invent it.  It spent Eu126,000,000,000 in 2011 and, in spite of the economic mess they have presided over and which we have to live with, they are already angling for a substantial increase in their budget.  Of the Eu126 billion, Britain contributes Eu12.9 billion.  Were it not for our rebate, this figure would be Eu3 billion higher and second only to Germany.  In the last eighteen months, there has been meeting after meeting after meeting in this or that city to discuss the next application of sticking plaster to hold the euro together. It may be that they can carry on doing this for years, while the rest of teh world picks itself up and carries on without the EU.  The politicians and ex-politicians in Europe like the euro and the idea of economic integration.  It gives them lots of opportunities for jollies and they can govern for the most part without the interference of the electorates.
At present Britain is governed by a collection of rich, posh boys, none of whom has had any proper job, nor even any previous ministerial experience.  When did we last have a government where no senior minister had previously held a job in government?  We will exclude Kenneth Clarke.  He enjoys his politics and he has had many cabinet jobs — and he was a reasonably successful chancellor of the exchequer — because he now has no more than a watching brief. Britain should remain in the EU — on balance — but only if they get rid of the euro and get back to a trading union of independent states.  We do not need a single currency.  It is in no one's interest to continue — not even Germany.  Greece should be allowed to go her own sweet way and a devalued drachma.  And if Greece, also Spain and Italy.  In no country in Western Europe is there any longer any enthusiasm for the EU.  The new members from the east have a different viewpoint.  They see the EU as a protection against intrusion by Russia.  This is a justified and reasonable attitude but it does not need a common currency.
It has been suggested that the British government can escape its problems by allowing the Bank of England to continue printing money to buy government debt, which never gets paid back.  This scheme lies on the road to madness.  This is the thinking of the Weimar Republic, destruction of the currency and hyper-inflation.  This way madness lies but will anyone realize it?
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