Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.

English democracy stands on the edge of an open grave. For eleven years it has been forced to dig, shovelling enabling legislation, with sweeping powers that can be made operative by Executive decree, through its Parliament. Protesting bitterly it has been forced to hollow out its own resting place and install the apparatus of European Union administrative governance. Steadily it has been backed towards the edge facing the firing squad manned by the men and women of New Labour.

The surrounding people who armed New Labour know nothing, see nothing, have no idea, never imagined, are just getting on with their lives, believe in the Labour Movement as a force for good both for themselves and for the decent and ordinary in the country.

What matters is a job, a house, and a chance for the kids. The sounds of firing in the woods? Nothing to do with them.

Do It Yourself Gordon Voodoo Kit

The voodoo doll of Nicholas Sarkozy that is available with twelve needles and instructions on their application and the correct attitude while sticking them in, must carry the judicial ruling:

"... the encouragement to poke the doll that comes with the needles in the kit, an activity whose subtext is physical harm, even if it is symbolic, constitutes an attack on the dignity of the person of Mr. Sarkozy."

The dolls sold out their first 'edition' and a second wave has now hit the shops.

Now then, where are those studies on voodoo? They're in with my old anthropology texts somewhere.

Common Sense

The core European Union countries are agreed now on how the recession is faced. With the relaxation of the constraints of the Stability and Growth Pact, each member state can react to regional expressions of the economic and financial threat, without infringing formal rules and their goals, devised for use when times are good. Communitaire sentiment is reliably deep-seated enough to permit this flexibility yet maintain long term interest.

The central agreement is extreme caution in borrowing, or attempting to restart the excesses of generally expanding credit. Case by case and locality by locality considerations of interventions by government are the order of the day. Where key economic and industrial interest is at stake there will be action by government, by private sources and by sectoral representatives, brokered by a long-established democratic set of institutions. There will be no sales-tax cuts, ineffective in enticing consumer spending anyway. There is recognition of the stable patterns of private consumption in core European member states, and the remarkably low levels of personal indebtedness. There will be no irresponsible expansions of public debt, certainly not to levels that would have most Europeans out on the streets protesting. The steady-as-she-goes tactic makes a great deal more sense than the systemic-crisis, demanding big bang solutions, cover up.

As the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (reported in Der Spiegel) writes:

"After the bank bailout, Chancellor Merkel has been feeling her way through crisis
management carefully. Balancing possibilities requires courage in a time when... governments faced with a flood of bad economic news, are heading for quick 'grand solutions' without regard to the negative impact on budgets or the disastrous consequences for competitiveness. In so doing the big bailout crowd runs the risk of encouraging worry and, with it, procrastination on the part of economic actors. We should be thankful to Angela Merkel for her calm probing, for grand solutions are difficult to audit and to calculate; they conceal big risks -- and a glance at the writings of Keynes won't deliver any panaceas...".

This view is embodied in the actions of all the core member-states.

The complete rejection of the analysis and policies adopted by our government by core Europe means that even if it were correct, the policies cannot work. Our non-financial economy is too small and too damaged, and our shattered financial economy too weak now; even the United States will find it hard to act effectively alone. And the United States is led by a popular, charismatic, elected leader - these political facts matter just as much as economic and financial realities.

For us there is only massive borrowing - not to implement keynesian-style solutions as is pretended - but simply to keep the financial fabric of the country from collapsing into holes. And if lenders choose not to lend, there is the monetisation of debt and inflation that frightens. Or both.

2009 is going to be bad. If we could face it together, acknowledging the need for retrenchment, enjoying some political and cultural unity, some political honesty about the state we are in, this would serve better than any more pseudo-keynesian claptrap and blaming its certain failure on the caution and prudence of others.

We don't need Leadership and global interventions by deluded messiahs. We need consensus and co-operation in our own country, we need the pragmatic and responsible application of the common sense other countries are demonstrating.

To obtain that the people need to be consulted in a general election.

The Home Secretary is Ignorant and Powerless

When the Mayor of London dismissed Labour's police chief he made it plain that the Home Secretary was in office but not in power. She could no more raise a hand to stop Mr Johnson from ridding us of a politicised and dangerous officer, than stop a London bus.

Now there are denials at the highest levels that she knew anything of the arrest of a Member of Parliament and the Speaker's authorisation of the search of Parliamentary offices by anti-terrorist police, until it had been done.

We know who is running the Metropolitan Police.

Who is running the Home Office?

The pretend Home Secretary must resign.

The Smack of Firm Government

International capital is not concerned with political niceties. It is concerned with political stability. Where it lends it wants to be sure that the institutional status quo will be upheld and maintained while its investment is at risk. Or the charge for risk may be too high for the borrower.

The United Kingdom Labour government must borrow heavily. It must show convincingly the stability and permanence of its control over the country. The apparatus to do this has been installed since 2000. Willingness and capacity to use it is being demonstrated.

'Whatever it takes' applies now to the arrest by counter-terrorism police of a Member of Parliament and the authorisation by the Speaker of the intrusion by police into the Parliament and a search of a Member of Parliament's offices.

We should expect more propaganda tokens of the extent and permanence of the Mandelson/Brown regime.

The Mandelson-Brown Pantomime Horse That Is Now New Labour

In clammy embrace, as they animate the poor old Dobbin of the Labour Party, Mandelson and Brown cavort their last on the political stage.

Mandelson speaks through the front orifice, reassuring us all that Woolworth's employees will keep their jobs over Christmas and that high level government intervention will defend pic'n'mix and the 'British' economy.

Brown's voice drones through the rear orifice, claiming to speak for the entire world, on everything from condemning attacks on hotels in Bombay to leading the planet to the sunlit uplands of fiscal probity and steady economic growth.

Given the complete lack of any constitutional or institutional rules or constraints it is impossible to visualise what will bring down the final curtain on this ridiculous performance.

Cold Turkey

Christmas dinner for four at under £10 is on offer from some shops. Ever since seeing it I've been considering how that can be possible. Economies of scale, industrialised production... even so , while feeding four for under £10 is perfectly feasible for a run of the mill meal, Christmas dinner is supposed to be a feast - THE feast of the year.

A feast has many courses, is made of the finest ingredients, includes foods that are costly as part of the show and part of the pleasure of eating a rare treat, and is an exhibition of the esteem in which the feasting are held by the feast-giver.

Giver. That is the heart of a feast. A gift. Generous to the point of profligacy, offered with joy, appropriate to the occasion, bringing gladness to the company, creating a separate time where care is put aside. A glorious lighted interval in the dark of winter to be looked forward to and worked for, and to be looked back on with happiness created, and the inclusion that gift-giving and accepting creates. And that is not to be achieved by offering a slice of turkey and a mince pie ready meal.

Poor? Save up for it. Unable to candy fruit, make a galantine, cook brussels' sprouts to taste of chestnuts, ....Practice. Don't like the cheap contents of the crackers? Replace them with something better (and funnier jokes). Don't want to? Then don't.

The thing offered by the supermarkets is a cultural insult. I can do insults for under £10.

Most of us can do insults for free.

Confidence in UK Government Securities On Brown's Watch

The cost of insuring against the British Government defaulting on its gilts in the next five years surged to 100 basis points above libor at one stage yesterday...The soaring cost comes as the Treasury unveiled record amounts of spending in the pre-Budget report, with plans to issue an unprecedented £146.4bn of gilts in this fiscal year. (reports the Telegraph).

A spokesman for the Debt Management Office said £77bn has been raised through gilt sales so far this financial year and these government assets "generally remain the preferred risk-free asset for major international investors and are in strong demand internationally and in the UK".... "We think investors in UK Government securities will be assured by the fact that the UK Government has never defaulted on a payment since the origins of the national debt in 1694."

So after only a year as Prime Minister (though admittedly the previous ten years busy wrecking the United Kingdom economy and the Treasury) Gordon Brown has undone over four centuries of trust and confidence and forced the need for statements like this one. The shame.

Power and its Placing

Looking at the Chancellor of the Exchequer during and after his presentation of the New Labour PBR it is clear that his heart isn't in it. Not only was there a smirking, writhing, inattentive Prime Minister misbehaving behind and beside him, there was the knowledge that he is regarded as Brown's puppet.

This is not true. The Chancellor is Mandelson's puppet, as is the Prime Minister.

The democratic deficit, that widened immeasurably with the toppling of the elected Prime Minister in 2007 that was not followed by a general election to confirm the 'change' in policy and governance under Brown, has become a yawning abyss over which our country is poised. Brown's abject failure to measure up to the job, demonstrated within months, led to the imposition of yet another unelected head of the UK Executive.

Hoiked into that part of the United Kingdom's legislature that is peopled by inheritance, Executive appointment, or purchase, 'Lord' Mandelson replaced the challenged, usurping incumbent. In doing so he made a small contribution to the intellectually interesting but democratically destructive evolution of power location in UK governance. The transfer of the autocratic powers of the Crown to the Parliament, then to the lower House, then to the Cabinet, then to the Prime Minister, has moved on.

Under the New Labour Project there was first the transfer of the powers of the Prime Minister - and the draining of remaining powers of the great offices of State - to the Chancellor, which we all watched from 1997 on. With Brown's failure while in the office of prime minister, we are watching the transfer of that concentrated power into the hands of a Party strongman - regardless of whether elected within the inner Party or, even less important, the country.

As Chancellor, Brown had the power but, within his wounded ego, yearned for the trappings of that power. Now he has been allowed to keep the trappings, but the power itself is settled in autocratic hands without the least interest in gaudy (which is not to be confused with interest in luxury).

Autocrats are essentially committed to the belief that the wielding of power is personal, face to face, and individual. It is not office-holder to office-holder, government to government, state to state, and answerable to the elected representatives of the people, from whom that power has been drained and from whom it arises. So with whom does our pet autocrat have these kind of relations?

Since the precipitation from Brussels we know of: Brussels and the European Union itself; Russia; and the oil rich states of the Gulf. Nice kula partners.

Keynes and the Tailor

In advanced capitalist societies the standard form of governance is pluralist democracy. It produces stable, safe nation states with high levels of co-operative contribution from citizens. It reduces risk. The United States has just given a demonstration to the world of how it's done.

The United Kingdom suffers from a burdensome democratic deficit. It is all very well saying dismissively that the Constitution is what we do, when we are relatively independent in choosing how we act. But that independence comes from a productive, vibrant, growing economy that provides a sufficient standard of living to the populace for them to behave as if they are within a pluralist democracy. When the economy threatens to collapse, when its survival becomes dependent upon investment by others in the United Kingdom, then the nature of its political and constitutional settlements gains as much importance as its economic and financial parameters.

Who would lend to an economically unstable state that does not enjoy either a democratic and written Constitution enforceable under the rule of law? Where the means to affirm their continued co-operation, if not their content, with their form of government is not available to the people except when the Executive is good and ready to permit its expression, rather than constrained to meet the people's judgment. And if such a fundamental part of a modern state is set up as 'what we do', where does that leave property and contract?

Loans of the order of trillions of pounds cannot be sought, and will not be given, on the word of Gordon Brown and Peter Mandelson. They do not have the reputation, even if they think they have the power. The power and the reputation rest with our country and without a general election and the restoration of democratic government in the United Kingdom there will be large premium to be paid by us all.

As we know from our hurried reintroduction to keynesian analysis, there is always a price at which payment can be delayed; until, that is, doubt as to capacity to meet, or be held to, the debt asserts itself.

We cannot afford New Labour ; international capitalism charges for risk, including that of political and social instability generated by under-determined institutions of the state.

Centenarian Holes Brown in One

"Some claim that human societies merely express, through their mythology, fundamental feelings common to the whole of mankind, such as love, hate, or revenge or that they try to provide some kind of explanations for phenomena which they cannot otherwise understand—astronomical, meteorological, [economic, ed.] and the like. But why should the societies do it in such elaborate and devious ways, when all of them are also acquainted with empirical explanations?"

I m convinced that Levi Strauss was thinking of Gordon Brown when he wrote the Savage Mind.

Though as the Master is 100 this week, perhaps Brown is a throwback.

Will Worlds Collide?

The absence of any acknowledgement of external reality within the New Labour Project is one of its foundation pillars, others being permanence in power, post democratic administration by appointees, identification of government with the state. Consequently New Labour cannot err, it merely shifts policy emphasis to maintain its balance and achieve its objectives.

This does not mean that external reality does not impinge upon New Labour, but when it does in the form of criticism, warning or advice there is a standard policy response of attacking the source as unhelpful, destructive, renegade or terrorist (depending on the level of threat posed by the criticism), and when it is from events these are invariably generated from outside New Labour's areas of control and implementation.

There has been extraordinary forbearance towards this unpleasant and unEnglish ideology and practice because those who have suffered from its overbearing ministrations have been state dependents of the waged and unwaged varieties. The self-sufficient have remarked on it but ignored it while it has not touched them. Outsiders have been content to use the unregulated casino of London's financial markets and pay taxes that are no more than a token gesture.

The victims of New Labour's external aggressions have been the civilian populations of Afghanistan, Iraq, and the former Yugoslavia - even more distant than Czechoslovakia.

Europe, Russia, America, Asia, have taken what they can use, particularly Brown's 'British' tax havens and his entrenched resistance to their control, and laugh a bit at the rest.

But if New Labour seriously tries to slash taxes, continue to lower interest rates, and mind the gap by raising funds borrowed on the strength and stability of the United Kingdom state and its economy, then default will finally bring down the New Labour temple.

Let us, on this Sunday morning, pray that the propaganda of the last weeks is just that, and tomorrow the usual mouse-sized actions, instantly reversed in the small print, will leave us to get on.

Weather Warning

You might like to sing them all to yourselves just once more before New Labour abolishes the British Isles. Viking North Utsire South Utsire Forties Cromarty Forth Tyne Dogger Fisher German Bight Humber Thames Dover Wight Plymouth Biscay Trafalgar Finisterre Sole Lundy Fastnet Irish Sea Shannon Rockall Malin Hebrides Bailey Fair Isle Faeroes Southeast Iceland Portland

Bankers' Manifesto

This arrived by email. You might like to share it.

Congressman Charles A. Lindbergh, Sr. revealed the Bankers Manifesto of 1892 to the U.S. Congress somewhere between 1907 and 1917.

'We [the bankers] must proceed with caution and guard every move made, for the lower order of people are already showing signs of restless commotion. Prudence will therefore show a policy of apparently yielding to the popular will until our plans are so far consummated that we can declare our designs without fear of any organized resistance.

Organizations in the United States [and this would go for the United Kingdom too] should be carefully watched by our trusted men, and we must take immediate steps to control these organizations in our interest or disrupt them.

At the coming Omaha convention to be held July 4, 1892, our men must attend and direct its movement or else there will be set on foot such antagonism to our designs as may require force to overcome.

This at the present time would be premature. We are not yet ready for such a crisis. Capital must protect itself in every possible manner through combination [conspiracy] and legislation.

The courts must be called to our aid, debts must be collected, bonds and mortgages foreclosed as rapidly as possible.

When, through the process of law, the common people have lost their homes,
they will be more tractable and easily governed through the influence of the strong arm
of the government applied to a central power of imperial wealth under the control of the leading financiers.

People without homes will not quarrel with their leaders. History repeats itself in regular cycles. This truth is well known among our principal men who are engaged in forming an imperialism of the world. While they are doing this, the people must be kept in a state of political antagonism.

The question of tariff reform must be urged through the organization known as the Democratic Party, and the question of protection with the reciprocity must be forced to view through the Republican Party.

By thus dividing voters, we can get them to expend their energies in fighting over questions of no importance to us, except as teachers to the common herd. Thus, by discrete actions, we can secure all that has been so generously planned and successfully accomplished.'

Banking Done By Grown Ups, Not Brown

Italian banks will need a capital injection of some €21bn to bring their financial strength into line with other European banks. They are resigned to accepting a government bail-out package expected to be announced soon, after weeks of resisting any interference from the government.

With little exposure to toxic assets their capital ratios are low compared to banks in countries such as the United Kingdom, which have had to take dramatic steps to recapitalise their banking systems.

With an initial €15bn to €20bn in total, in the form of a mandatory convertible bond issue, all banks could boost their core tier one capital ratios to that of European banks in general, around 8 per cent, from the current ratio of less than 7 per cent. There is no official requirement for the banks to raise capital, but analysts say a core tier one ratio of 8 per cent is likely to become the minimum standard.

The Italian government is not expected to set a new benchmark for the country’s banks as part of the package, reports the FT, and it will be up to the banks themselves to decide whether they want to participate in the state aid package. Individual banks have taken measures already, such as cancelling dividend payments and tapping shareholders.

' No Italian bank has required the sort of bailout that was offered to Fortis, Royal Bank of Scotland, and other European banks.' (FT).

Hillary Needs A Mobile Home

Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State is not an attractive proposition. A woman following another woman in this office begins to downgrade it. It shouldn't, but it does; just as all kinds of professional roles have been downgraded by their filling with women candidates. The medical profession in the Soviet Union sank in esteem, rewards, and quality of recruitment as women spread through it reducing its attractiveness to ambitious men. The teaching profession has sunk in attractiveness as it has come to be dominated by women in England, and in many other European countries. It is as incorrect to notice this as it is to mention it.

The American Secretary of State is, more or less, the Foreign Secretary of the world's greatest, and imperial, power. Power embodies military power and, while women serve with courage and distinction in the armed forces, most women have no military experience or culture - certainly Clinton and Rice do not. Furthermore, what might be acceptable, even commonplace in the United States is not so in many of the countries and non-country power-bases in which an American Secretary of State acts. There have been giggles already about Clinton's claims to frontline experiences in the former Yugoslavia.

From the posturing viewpoint adopted by New Labour of course, appointing a female Foreign Secretary with the support and advice of her elderly husband could be portrayed as following their lead. Perhaps if Clinton is being taken on with a view to getting two for the price of one, a form of bargain in which she once offered herself on her husband's election to high office, then all she needs to do is get herself a caravan to close the deal.

Feeling Financially Faint

New Labour's economy and financial system is clearly over the edge of the cliff and peddling air. The petty recoveries against dollar and euro have spent themselves. The rate against the euro is now so poor it's best just to spend pounds here, though what happens when the desirable goods run out? Do we start buying whatever is available and then bartering for others' hoarded goods? After all, we have so many other aspects of eastern Europe's sad, 'planned' economies. Yesterday at Marks and Spencer was revelatory; people cramming entire racks of basic, good value M and S staples into trolleys. Someone might need two dozen plain white cotton mens' vests in Large if leaving for colonial service, but we don't do that any more. It was so noticeable that the shelf-stripping was not of the exotic or fashionable or M and S's idea of trendy, but of the serviceable, the absolutely standard.

Everyone was in Marks. Yes they had 20% off, but so did other shops which were as empty as those without. I'm going to the Tottenham Court Road tomorrow to get a computer and things before there's only old stock or no stock as the pound fails. What an appalling, unmitigated mess. So unnecessary. We could have had a decent bit of redistribution and social investment without wreaking this havoc. We did under MacMillan and under Ken Clarke. That'll teach us to install a spavined mule in office for eleven years.

Still, went for a new hairstyle this morning. Short and very shiny - like a glistening helmet (some underlying martial spirit showing itself perhaps). It's all very well having hair that can be put up, tied well back for the summer in all the heat, but it's jolly severe in face-pinching winter cold. And while they do cut hair beautifully in Italy, there is always that touch of exaggeration, that 'lit up like the Pontevecchio' (but for hair) aspect to their styling. London does it, but with proper English restraint. So if you see a passing angel with a shining casque of hair, carrying a bagful of fairisle jumpers and some Spode, on the number 7, say Hello.

Holding a General Election

The discussions of whether there will be a general election would benefit from being viewed through the prism of an election held in, for instance, the German Democratic Republic.

The Executive commands the Party completely and all policy and administrative decisions rest with the Executive. The numbers of alterations to internal Party democracy pushed through since the beginning of the 1990s have all concentrated policy, administrative and disciplinary powers in Executive hands - to the point now when even in Conference no vote may be taken that could be binding on the Executive, even were an unacceptable vote able to be forced, which it cannot as agendas are in the hands of the Executive.

The Party is quite small. Many are members of the Labour Movement but there is decoupling of the Movement from the Party itself. With this in mind the state of unreadiness of the Constituency Labour Parties, cited as evidence that no election is planned, becomes irrelevant. An election will not be fought that relies upon the mobilisation of CLPs as has been the case invariably up to now. We know this from the poverty of information and updated local party canvass returns in Glasgow East and in Glenrothes which was a source of wonder to the SNP, who are still campaigning in the standard way with close contacts with constituency members by candidates and a policy of soft canvassing and information-gathering at all times.

When the self identification of the New Labour Executive with the state itself, rather than as the government in office, is borne in mind, then state data bases, now extensive and far more invasive than political canvass returns, obviate the need for local party structures, and sophisticated analyses and targetting of local areas can be completed centrally. This will be a rolling programme so that there is a complete political picture of important local issues and threats, that can be dealt with in a co-ordinated and timely fashion using state resources available to a sitting government.

Poor Party funding status becomes irrelevant too as state resouces are made available to candidates, ostensibly to enhance 'communication' with constituents for instance.

Candidates can be profiled to fit local conditions and then imposed from the centre; they are, we know this from Glenrothes. Sitting candidates who cannot conform to the election strategy and profiles will be removed; grounds will be various and apparently reasonable - age for old mavericks, quango and other state-gift financial inducements for inappropriately profiled or ill-disciplined other candidates, a few straightforward bootings-out pour encourager les autres.

Mass inducements to a local electorate can be offered by the state. Want a call centre? Regional development funds? A good transport connection? How about a nice new school? Votes don't have to be bought one by one, though that will be on offer too. Local planning permissions, no health and safety hassle, 'grants for individual development of disadvantaged (enter category of your choosing)'. House, anyone? Frighteners can be applied too; would you like to be constantly reassessed for whatever claims you have been awarded? Some local services closed down?

As for getting out the vote, proxy, postal and perhaps electronic voting will all be used. There were voters in the Glenrothes by-election who had not voted for 15 years and more in general elections; moved to play their part in democracy in a by-election?

If the disaffection is too great all of this will come into play but may not be enough to get home. If the polls can be 'tailored' and publicised to demonstrate that the gap is narrow, so voting the 'wrong way' may lead to direct and personal loss and gain, then an election is viewed more favourably. The lack of any fixed term for a parliament or even the constitutional requirement for an election at all should be remembered too. It is not true, for well-rehearsed reasons, that there must be an election in 2010. Thsi choice of timing confers great advantage on the Executive in power.

The mass disaffection statements put together by the fuel protesters, the Countryside Movement, the Anti-War demonstrations, are important in building non-political networks that embolden voters in their opposition to government-as-state policies and practices. In eastern Germany they used the churches and non-religious cultural institutions' networks to build levels of personal resistance. But there the people had suffered democratic centralism and its absurd pretensions for nearly half a century - we have only had it since the beginning of this century and the crushing of democratic life and hopes and choice has not got everywhere yet.

The Opposition must energise its voters and enable them to support one another in facing this regime. The old political practices of our democracy are gone, as is shown so graphically by the empty Associations and CLPs. It is not just a matter of a clear and attractive set of policies, a manifesto that sets out what is to be done, though that is lacking too, and by this stage in the old game it ought to be being promulgated loud and clear.

The Opposition is at the enormous disadvantage of facing and opposing the state. And the state is developing a nasty capacity to tar effective opposition as irresponsible through to terrorist, and its practioners as renegades.

England our England

Travelling along with an old friend I was struck by their loyalty to England. It has been accepted between us always that my views are to the left of theirs and that this is in part the result of class and upbringing as well as levels of wealth and connection. People like me benefitted immeasurably from the provision of opportunity in education, the availability of medical services, the removal of gross social conflict achieved by subsidised housing and unemployment benefit; and from the opening up of professional work, both government and private, to the influx of the meritocratically qualified. The scolarships and grants we won were to an entire lifestyle, not just to a school or university or professional training.

When we see New Labour tearing all this down, installing a surveilled client voter base with all that implies for the infliction of social and economic rigidity, masked under apparent expenditure increases in what once was such an admirable provision, our anger is much greater than that of those who never had to use, nor would consider using for their families, any of it.

Their loyalty is to their England, and if some aspects are authoritarian or deny social mobility, or cause financial misery for millions, that is a current misfortune that has occurred before and will be corrected by some felt but undefined quality of the English way of arranging the world; England has been through all of this before, and it doesn't really touch us, does it? New Labour are the government - yes, Brown's accession to power is iffy, but he is the prime minister now - and while they are the government they should have our support. Certainly they are unattractive, yes, they are failing quite large numbers of people, indeed, quite deliberately to enjoy being in power. Yes they lie and are amazingly hypocritical, all of that. But look at the United States; think of the support being offered to their new president by all Americans; we don't make such a public virtue of it but we cannot deny our support to our own country just because of the reprehensible Brown and his peculiar government. That would be to concede far too much importance to a temporary embarrassment. And staring at poor behaviour isn't quite right either.

True, all of it, but I cannot detach myself from all the people who are being let down, deprived, being fobbed-off with the third- and worse - rate, unnecessarily impoverished, plain bullied, because the England to which one owes allegiance is untouched, and attitudes and upbringing make protesting their condition, which most of the people seem to accept, graceless.

Also, this time, they aren't going to go away, you know.

Buying What Can Still Be Found

It's not just the shadow-Chancellor. The chances of a sterling collapse have never been so high. Angels fly tomorrow in the hope of getting out what is still in London. If it turns out to be, as feared, too late, then there will be some very fine presents under the tree this Christmas from bagging the prettiest things before they all disappear. It feels appropriately socialist planned economy to be carrying an 'in case' case.