Merit and Choice

Merit is best for choosing; so we ask 'What is merit?'

It used to have some cruel outcomes when merit was too closely identified with advantage - cultural or economic. Of the two, I find economic advantage alone unacceptable in education.

Cultural is another matter, as education is the transmission of culture. There may be something like raw intelligence, which has been deprived of input, as well there is lesser potential carefully nurtured by fortunate circumstance.
Neither should be ignored.

Examination success is too crude a measure to weigh and filter all these factors. It's just a first sort-out but gets mistaken for achievement, of itself, rather than being something that reinforces confidence and encourages further effort to advance.

None of this complexity can be measured by rules alone. And it's all made even more complex by social and economic opportunity and status attaching to it, at times being used to exclude, or to pretend fairness while really cloaking economic and social privilege.

Perhaps one of the most successful solutions to providing objective assessment and a measure of progress and encouragement is the
public, open-to-all, graded exam system of the Royal Schools of Music. All the A-levels and O- levels used to be similar public examinations open to all.

They are widely regarded as elitist now but there's no egalitarianism in music performance. There is no egalitarianism in anything really, but that need not be used to justify the denigration of high culture, or the denial of greater fitness for a particular task, or course of study, at hand.

On the whole it might be best if examinations were removed from the control of the schools and their internal assessments, and returned to being public examinations to be taken by whoever enters (though obviously most candidates will be school pupils).

And proper recognition returned to the capacities of commissioners, examiners, admissions tutors, to know their job and their duty to fairness as well.

Do They Have to Have GCSE English?

Cambridge University no longer requires a foreign language to meet its minimum entry requirements. The Director of Admissions for the Cambridge Colleges said: "This change would remove something which has, unfortunately, become a significant barrier impeding access to Cambridge."

Well, it would be wouldn't it? No French, German, Italian, or any classical language might be a bit of a handicap for anybody wishing to read philosophy, or history, or the history of art, or music, or archaeology, anthropology, divinity, mathematics, history of science.... you know - the sort of elitist faculties they have in Cambridge.

And while it might no longer be a formal requirement, being monolingual isn't going to help; formal requirements are the very least that is needed for entry into Cambridge.

Managing Local Democracy

The sensation that politicians, even politics itself, are a waste of time, is as widely reported as it is experienced. The explanation put forward most often is a nebulous ' disillusionment'.

Nonsense. Political boundaries on the ground and political categories of policy and action have been decoupled from administrative, expenditure, and statistics-gathering categories, under New Labour's' 'managed democracy'.

We vote for local representatives - They grid the United Kingdom with need/homogeneity/relations-to-central-plans-expenditure sectors. Our elected representatives and the electorate to whom they respond match none of this gridding and can do only their limited best to liaise with like others who are trying also to cope with unresponsive central administration physical and policy agendas.

Power lies where the money goes, and our money goes where the central government's gridding decides; our electoral and democratic power collapses.

The Conservative party has published a list of those grid areas where more than 50% of the inhabitants survive solely on tax-funded benefit payments; not the parishes, local or even metropolitan council areas, the grid sectors.

Which Superoutput Area do you live in?

Another Day, Another Run

The three, separate runs on Northern Rock ended in the very public disgrace of queues on the streets by desperate retail depositors (the last to realise it was time to run) trying to get their money out, being shown across the world.

The only reason we are not reacting quite so sharply to the run on Bear Stearns is because, as at Northern Rock, the wholesale run,the panicked withdrawal of capital by leading financial institutions from an investment bank, won't lead to queues in the street. In this case there will not be a retail run to follow as there are no retail depositors; but if I had deposits in any bank with a similar structure to Northern Rock or Bear Stearns, I would be waiting for the doors to open on Monday morning.

Two for the Price of One.

The Economist notes that if Geoffrey Howe had sold 12.7 million ounces of gold at the 1980 peak price of $850 he would have received almost $11 billion. Invested in Treasury Bonds this would have yielded 7% a year, so the tax payer would be around $90 billion up on the transaction.

Come on Gordon (or your puppet), retrieve your disaster in selling gold at $276 an ounce (all 12.7m of them), and cover your Northern Rock disaster too.

Are We Nearly There Yet?

Yes. Not long now before the headlines of the business pages transform into daily experiences and unaffordably high prices for everyday purchases; we are already exhausting obvious substitutions like cheaper cuts of meat, usually chicken, fresh fish almost never and then farmed salmon, avoiding salad products for frozen basic greens, bulking out meals with rice, pastas, pulses and bread. Already we pass Waitrose on the way to our local no-frills. We've stopped redecorating, and the domestic equipment is going to have to do another year, as will the curtains.

Clothes are separates, no longer the pretty summer dress from Fenwicks, the well cut jacket and skirt that costs a bit but will last for years, a silk or linen blouse; but 'tops' with jeans or machine washables.

There might be a 'do', an evening out with our local club, but otherwise we'll be eating at home and cooking from quite close to scratch, though the frozen vegetables are easier (as well as cheaper). And after supper? Once we're in for the evening, we usually stay - there's not a lot of going out for a stroll and a drink when it's cold, and the streets are hardly friendly, are they? We've cut back on the pub.

We thought we might remortgage to replace the car - the children's school seems to cost more and more, now they're bigger - and have a little holiday, but the bank doesn't want to know and the rates are through the roof; the fixed rate ends this year too.

The unemployment hasn't really started yet but the taxes just go up and up to pay for those already out. And the council's services are rubbish: the library closed half the time, old stock, you wouldn't think they'd heard of books, just videos; the swimming pool is usually given over to special groups and it's none too clean anyway. The new houses were built on the playing fields and sports pitches.

Dreary. Making do. That's how it feels at first. Then comes scary, as your house is worth less than your mortgage, and the rate on your savings is lower than inflation; then comes cold, as energy prices drop your living temperatures, and then comes no car and all the impossibilities of using a collapsed transport system; then getting ill from poorish diet and exposure to forgotten effects of poverty like rising levels of dirt.

Everybody's in the same boat. Precisely, so services are pushed until they break, which happens quite quickly as there's little elasticity inbuilt. And the socially more vulnerable, and more isolated, fail to cope entirely. People go mad, become criminal, burden families that are already under pressure with chronic illness, depression, and crises generated by infrastructure failure.

Life expectancy starts to fall as social cooperation shrinks, social order is first maintained by force and then degenerates anyway. Hope and reasonable aspiration fades for all but the toughest-minded, the best organised, those determined not to suffer the inner colllapse that comes with great loss.

And the loss is enormous; delivered by the ideological malevolence and, worse, the technical incompetence of the last 11 years of New Labour.

Freedom of Conscience

The Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill should be voted down, it makes provision for creating monstrosity.

And Mr Cameron's principled view that such a Bill must have a free vote is the only possible stance that can "respect the conscience", as the Prime Minister puts it, of our members of Parliament and respect our consciences in placing our trust in our elected representatives.

It is not enough to permit abstention - staying away is both avoidance of responsibility, and effective acquiescence, as the Liberal Democrats showed us all last week. How contemptible that the Labour Whip, Hoon, has conceded such a cop-out, for those who get his permission first. On what grounds and behind what documentation is permission given? Chit from the parish priest? Would the vicar or minister or rabbi do too? Certified anti-eugenics activism?

Is there any aspect of authoritarianism, and eugenic experimentation must be first in its catalogue of horrors, neglected by this regime?

They want to make fish soup out of the aquarium (in E-K's devastating image).

So What?

Balls asks the correct question in the face of the United Kingdom having the highest tax burden in its history.

So what? when only the little people pay tax. So what? when work is not so much a productive activity, but increasingly a therapeutic, life-style accessory provided as a pastime for the unemployed and unemployable clients of the New Labour regime. So what? when a system of the poor servicing the poor within a closed system of low-level regime-provision has been cemented into place, and any wealth produced serendipitously is siphoned off by consumption tax farming.

Children are unhappier and worse educated than any of their European peers, hospital treatment is delayed and often offered in filthy and dangerous conditions, the elderly must beg for 'allowances' and 'special payments' (and the fuel allowance increase is for one year only) with their taxes doubled from 10 to 20%, and their pensions stolen over the last 11 years of New Labour; and in the name of 'battling' climate change, everyone's cheap holidays are moved out of reach or blighted by inflicted chaos in travel arrangements in the name of yet another 'war'; while on the real battlefronts of the regime's illegal wars, troops are maimed and die for New Labour's refusal to fund their equipment.

So What? when the permanent, managed democracy is yielding power and wealth to its monopolists, living their dream in a separate fiscal world of life-costs paid as expenses, and privatised riches created by the sale and exchange of state power.

Laffable

The success of Gordon Brown's fiscal policy is the dubious creation of ideal conditions for the Laffer Curve and its perverse effects. The point is being passed or has been passed already where higher rates of taxation lead to lower absolute levels of tax revenue.

The curve, and its curviness, is empirically unproven. Except for Russia.

The Russian introduction of a flat tax at around 10% raised total tax revenue, and we all Laffed.

It stands to reason that with a 43% average tax burden and far higher marginal rates, the United Kingdom too has become Laffable.

All Things Bright and Beautiful

All things bright and beautiful,
All creatures great and small,
All things wise and wonderful:
The Lord God made them all.

Each little flower that opens,
Each little bird that sings,
He made their glowing colours,
He made their tiny wings.

Well, I used to enjoy singing it in Assembly, and lots of other hymns; made us feel very much as if we belonged. Try a verse or two of We Plough the Fields and Scatter...

Hand on heart swearing allegiance to the Queen and Brown's British state doesn't do it for me.

A Tissue of Lies

Telling lies, imaginatively, determinedly, consistently, with appropriate adjustments in investigable areas of life such as bank accounts, addresses, health records, age and other statuses, must be the only way forward in the face of council taxes, income taxes, insurances, falling wages, and social engineering with malice.

We have been lied to by the New Labour regime on war, sovereignty, immigration, public services - particularly health and education which no-one in their right mind would use from choice - policing and public safety, and on votes cast, for which parties and by whom, in local and national elections.

Lies are our national culture; and we should all partake of our Britishness, together in our various diversities.

What Governance Is This?

'Police believe there is a network of four secret rooms at the home but have struggled to access the bricked-up chambers.

Fragments of bone, blood spots and graffiti reading "I've been bad for years and years" were found in the first room.

Police are still awaiting tests on the bone and blood samples to help them trace and date the finds.'

Northern Ireland, Scotland, Wales, North Eastern England, the Midlands, Islington - the list goes on and on for years and years.

Angels Slightly Foxed

Bonds always fox me. The more people want them the lower they pay; the more worry about their provenance the better their yield.

100 points spread sounds like a lot to the uninformed, but that's only one per cent interest rate differential in the cost of new borrowing. This is neither going to push Italy and Greece into bankruptcy, nor discourage existing lenders from holding old debt; they can avoid the capital loss on falling bond prices by just waiting for them to mature.

The rising spread is a problem that belongs to debtor countries - such as Greece, Italy and Spain - anyway; and it's a problem too for creditors, should these countries default, which they won’t, they're nowhere near default.

What it is not, is a problem for the Euro; nor for any other Euro-zone country that is not suffering from internal or external imbalances. The state of New York could go bust without affecting the value of the US dollar.

So why such euro-centred economic catastrophism? The Dollar and the Pound are looking much iffier even if their bonds are yielding less than Italy's.

Golden Slumbers

Digging up and then re-vaulting gold isn't a very smart human endeavour. It yields no interest, its only yield is capital appreciation, and its massive capital appreciation has been in terms of that depreciating asset the US dollar.

Gold has no significant monetary use any longer, it is over-priced in terms of industrial and of decorative use;higher incomes bring better taste in modes of expressing wealth, let alone the chavvier aspects of wearing golden chains.
Further, malleabiity and durability lose importance with increasing wealth and sophisticated alternative investment instruments.

A year ago unsophisticated demand assured continued gold appreciation, but it's all over. The psychological $1000 an ounce threshold can easily be crossed when dollars are worth less and less. But in terms of purchasing power parities the price of gold cannot be sustained. Gold belongs in stone age economics and cheap cultures.

Gold was the place to be. Normally it isn't, and it isn't now for those awake to economic realities.

Golden slumbers kiss your eyes,
Smiles awake you when you rise;
Sleep, pretty wantons, do not cry,
And I will sing a lullaby.

Bestialising Humanity

The calculation lying within the Bill to allow mixing of human and animal embryos to create hybrids being confounded with allowing lesbian couples to register as joint legal parents of a child born through fertility treatment, is obvious.

To finance and encourage the breeding of partly-human and partly other-species embryos is the encouragement of an unnatural act to which the recognition of a valid lifestyle is wholly unrelated; we are all able to love in many ways; the predominant pattern of loving can take any form in anyone, depending upon whom we meet and circumstance.

But the evil of producing chimeras, experimenting upon these living entities, then killing them before a maturity that is found challenging by those who countenance such actions, could not be further from the loving, recognized, upbringing of a human child.

For shame to have sought the acceptance of one, by such unnatural coupling with the other.

Just for England

"enjoy the two key benefits of the National Identity Scheme - improved protection and greater convenience". The Westminster Home Secretary.

"We are opposed to the concept of compulsory ID cards. We feel the UK Government is attempting to introduce this measure by stealth. We will be making representations to them to make clear our vehement opposition to it." Spokesman for the Scottish Government.

Whoops.

Then As Now

" In this country the living reality is Parliament itself. In a sense, our constitution is an abstraction: it is what is said about, and what attempts to describe, the living reality of Parliament.

... In this country the guarantee of the supremacy of Parliament and of our legislative independence as a nation does not lie in words on paper. It does not lie in vellum and parchments. It lies in a political will and the continued exercise of that will, the political will of those of whom the House of Commons is the expression. The people themselves, their political will and their determination to exert it, are the ultimate guarantee, and the only ultimate guarantee, of the sovereignty of this House and of the legislative and political independence of the nation.

That fact, which I do not believe can be contested, is the reason why to pass this Bill lies outside that unwritten contract which all Members of this House have with those who sent them here. We have not been charged by that political will, on which alone rests the independence and sovereignty of Parliament and of this country, with the duty or the permission to share it or to abrogate it.

In their own consciences my hon. Friends must speak for themselves. But if it be open to dispute what these digital majorities betoken—under all the influences of power and patronage, which we well know operate in this House, and amid all the cross-currents which we understand and are familiar with—whatever be the judgment of the atmosphere here, there can be no doubt about the sense out of doors. The most determined attempts which have been made month after month by all forms of persuasion to shake the political disinclination of the great body of the people towards what is being done by this Bill have proved unsuccessful.

Whether it has been presented on the one hand as a fait accompli, as something which is over and done, something which is all over bar the shouting, which people must make shift to get used to, or whether it has been presented in the most glowing colours as new opportunity, as accretion of sovereignty or power, the great mass of the people, whose sovereign expression in this House is at stake, have remained unmoved. The only practical effect of this long Committee stage has been to expose to those outside even more clearly what is at stake. Their reaction to that clearer understanding, to which perhaps our debates have contributed, is such that it is a usurpation for a House of Commons, well knowing the state of opinion in the country, to seek by the Bill to surrender or diminish the sovereignty of Parliament, and the ultimate authority of our courts, including the High Court of Parliament over the subject in all matters and causes.

(Mr. J. Enoch Powell (Wolverhampton, South-West) Hansard 5 July 1972)

Scotland may prefer not to be dragged into the European Federal State

Twelve members of the Westminster Parliament are elected by Scottish voters as Liberal Democrat MPs.

Here is the Early Day Motion tabled recently by Alistair Carmichael, who has just resigned from his shadow Liberal Democrat front bench position over the amendment seeking a referendum on the Lisbon Treaty which the Liberal Democrat leadership sought to defeat.

- That this House notes with concern clause 27 (Jurisdiction to try offences committed in the UK) in the Counter Terrorism Bill which would allow terrorism offences committed in Scotland to be tried in any court in the United Kingdom; recognises that the constitutional independence of the Scottish legal system was recognised in the Act of the Union in 1707; believes Clause 27 represents an unjustified and unconstitutional attack on the integrity of the independent Scottish legal system; and this House calls on UK ministers to support an amendment to remove clause 27 from the Counter Terrorism Bill.

Mr Carmichael stated:

“The independence of the Scottish legal system has been recognised and protected since Scotland entered the Union in 1707. The Government is now trying to rip that up for no good reason...
“This clause goes much further than the Government claims. Although they justify it by speaking of offences where there is action on both sides of the border, the impact is much wider than that. It is unnecessary, unwanted and unsustainable.”

How many other Scottish-elected Liberal Democrats might be reconsidering their allegiances?

European Union membership for Scotland is considerably less advantageous than it is for Brown's 'Labour' party, who are regarded as having irretrievably blotted their Scottish copybook after half a century of degradation and misrule of Scotland.

Slithy Toves

The Liberal Democrats could have struck a deal with the Conservatives and with the Labour rump party: it is the only explanation for the ridiculousness of imposing a three line whip on an abstention.

For the Conservatives an abstention by the Liberal Democrats provides the opportunity for a principled stand on trying their very best for the referendum on the Lisbon Treaty without the risk of getting one, which would be so divisive for the Conservatives - wins all round with Labour looking what they are, a lying, corrupt reneging, authoritarian junta.

For the Labour rump, the advantage is that there is no defeat, even though a subsequent vote of confidence would put that right (well rightish), and no loss of face and apparent unity under Brown.

For Brown everyone would have been made to do as they are told. For Cameron he could pretend no one needed telling.

The price is the same to both sides: the alteration of the system of election to benefit a minority party, and places in an Executive of either side.

Clegg's, and many members of the Liberal Democrat party's misjudgement is thinking they could look, indeed remain, honourable, and keep their vote in the country, by pretending to another referendum altogether that is neither wanted by the majority, nor needed in this instance.


`Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.

That'll be the Liberal Democrats.

A Fool's Bauble or Representative Democracy

Three parties committed to a referendum on the Lisbon Treaty. Those three parties are sitting in a Parliament of such doubtful legitimacy, with an Executive led by an unelected Prime Minister from a Scottish seat, (whose country has its own elected Parliament), claiming to wield the majority of an ousted Leader; a majority which could be used to end the independence of our country.

A discredited Speaker (returned, too, by a Scottish electorate) sits before the Mace, presiding over a symbol of the authority of Parliament won from autocratic rule.

We shall see today if the members of our Parliament are Jugglers, Whoremasters, and Drunkards who have cheated the Publick.

Liberal Democrats Must Keep Their Manifesto Commitments

A referendum on the new European Constitutional Treaty is what was assured in the manifestos of all three main political parties. The Conservative party is trying to hold Labour and the Liberal Democrats to their commitment.

The position that there should be a referendum on leaving the European Union, adopted by the Liberal Democrat leader, is dishonest: it fails to meet the centrality of holding to manifesto commitments upon which voters decide their votes. We, the people, made voting choices in the belief that our constitutional relationship with the European Union was subject to a referendum no matter which party we voted for and, thus we moved on to choices determined by other criteria.

Labour and the Liberal Democrats have chosen different acts of dishonesty to cover their falsity to their manifesto commitments - not promises, not objectives - commitments.

Labour's pretence that Lisbon is not a fundamental alteration in the constitutional status of the United Kingdom, both internally and vis a vis the European Union, is the Big Lie technique. The Liberal Democrat technique is the Drive out the Better with the Unwanted Best manoeuvre.

We do not want a referendum on leaving the European Union while what is being rammed through Parliament by whipped votes and Blair's stolen majority is a profound alteration of our internal and external governmental relations. We want what was committed -to by all parties, and by our last elected Prime Minister, a referendum on the Lisbon Treaty.

The concerned left of centre, who have passed from supporting Labour after its revelation as a corporatist, authoritarian, state regime, to supporting the Liberal Democrats, have now another party which can realise their wish for a social and compassionate governance that values our traditions and manages carefully the crueller results of changing economic and social circumstance. The Liberal Democrats should consider carefully too that those who have paused in their party as they flood out of the party of statist corruption will move on to a political party that keeps its word unless the Liberal Democrats keep theirs.

Held Close in Brown's Embrace

Choosing Ken Livingstone as Labour's candidate for London mayor was a disservice to the Labour Party (at least the Labour party I used to look at with concerned regard). This was argued here when the nomination (without opposition) was accepted. Ken Livingstone may have re-entered the Labour Party, but entrist is what he, and his 'loyal' praetorians, are.

However, when he stood as an independent, who could resist voting for Ken and poking Brown into yet another unrestrained fit of hysterics, as his hold over the Party was shown to be less than perfect, (Blair didn't mind a bit, his hold was over the country), and his judgement in insisting that Ken should be drummed out shown up as yet another fit of pique.

Now the enjoyment of poking Brown yet again with a sharp stick is offered by voting Official-Labour-Regime Ken down, who can resist?

If there had not been the disgusting Lee Jasper, Redmond O'Neill and John Ross (are the last two undercover agents for MI Something?), and Labour and its grey governance had backed one of theirs - some conformist apparatchik from their seemingly bottomless (well, bottomless might be a disqualifier in New Labour) pit, we would all have gone for Ken again.

But as Jonah Brown's endorsed candidate, Ken is going to lose it unless he tells us all what he thinks of Brown and his decade of vicious incompetence at the Treasury.

You know it makes sense Ken, and you've nothing to lose, for either you do for Brown or his clammy embrace will do for you.

British Homes for British Workers

The New Order Leader has done it again. What, you wince in horror, has he done again?

Any citizen of the European Union can buy a house wherever they choose in the EU. No ifs, no buts, no Brownspeak. Except for people in the United Kingdom buying in the United Kingdom. They must have permission from the Labour regime.

Considering Labour members of the Westminster parliament are using their second home financing possibilities to pollute Tuscany, that is out of order. At least they've been confined to Sinalunga - no one wants to live there anyway.

Secondary School Place Allocation

Tomorrow, the children born on the day "a new dawn has broken, yes it has',will discover the rest of their life chances, wholly moulded under New Labour.

Already many of them have not learned to read or write in their own language, and certainly they have not learned any foreign language; already they are functionally innumerate; they will have no musical skills of worth - for to play an instrument to any serious level requires the same early start as to learn mathematics or another language, it is a function of the development of the brain and nervous system, as has been known for much more than a decade.

Many will be fat and without sports' fields to exercise, nor competitions to win. Swimming lessons will have been denied in the interests of avoiding offence to cultural groups that choose to see sin in diversity of gender.

And a culture of contempt for interest, curiosity, learning and achievement will have been fostered by a unionised workforce determined to assert its priority over the interests of the children and families they ought to serve.

If you have provided all that is, by diktat, lacking in your children's primary schooling, you will find your efforts derided and disgraced as your beloved daughters and sons are thrust into precisely the company and cultural milieu from which you have sought to protect them.

Unless you have the money to buy them out. For the rest, if you're white, it's not all right, if you're brown there's no stick around, and if you're black, along with all the others, get back.

Touch

Just in case you missed it, this: (from Informed Comment)


'Mixed in with Queen Elizabeth's blue blood is the blood of the Moslem prophet Mohammed, according to Burke's Peerage, the geneological guide to royalty. The relation came out when Harold B. Brooks-Baker, publishing director of Burke's, wrote Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher to ask for better security for the royal family.

''The royal family's direct descent from the prophet Mohammed cannot be relied upon to protect the royal family forever from Moslem terrorists,'' he said. Probably realizing the connection would be a surprise to many, he added, ''It is little known by the British people that the blood of Mohammed flows in the veins of the queen. However, all Moslem religious leaders are proud of this fact.''

Brooks-Baker said the British royal family is descended from Mohammed through the Arab kings of Seville, who once ruled Spain. By marriage, their blood passed to the European kings of Portugal and Castille, and through them to England's 15th century King Edward IV. '

Respect

Gordon Brown is confronting plastic bags - seriously.

You really have to give it, don't you.

Contempt.

Buffy in Bloomsbury

Bloomsbury sounds so different from Holborn and St Pancras, but the London enclosed by the Euston Road, Gray's Inn Road, the river and the Tottenham Court Road is one entity bound together by its gardens and squares, its universities and libraries, hospitals and research institutes, Inns of Court and professionals' pied-a-terre in pretty edwardian blocks, its museums and art collections, and diversity of shops and restaurants. Bloomsbury conjures up georgian splendour while Holborn and St Pancras brings council blocks to mind;both are here and as integrated as the population, in all their diversity.

Which is why we all put our stakes into our handbags and coat pockets and went to the Stakeholder Workshop on the Bloomsbury Corridor (refreshments provided), despite the effort it took to find out where and when - having emailed our acceptance of the inaudible invitation. They had underestimated our bush telegraph. And us. They've been doing that for ages; they want to end the community that lives in such a desirable, central quarter between the City and the Government; we aren't their sort. So spurning their sandwiches and juice, we set to on the vampires of undemocratic governance.

They fought hard. Each stake holder was required to state name and number - and the names rolled: the British Museum (a Slayer and his Watcher);the University of London (a lone Slayer but with wonderful braids);the Vicar of St Pancras (he had no stake with him but his church, with its caryatids, has one of the finest organs in London); the chairpersons of the Bloomsbury Square, Russell Square, Tavistock Square, any Square you can bring to mind, (and their Watchers); the Marchmont Street Association, traders and residents (Slayer and Watcher); our local, elected Councillors.....and a resident Angel.

They had us sign in and leave addresses; our lips curled like their sandwiches.

Then the self-designated Chair of the meeting told us the order of business: the last item would be Questions and we would possess our souls in patience until then as there was much to get through.

Item 1 - Welcome. We all understood how welcome we were and the platitudes petered out.
Item 2 - Project Background. Woburn Place, east side of Tavistock Square, Russell Square, Southampton Row, and Kingsway into the Aldwych needs to be turned into a race track for the Olympic delegates and press who will be quartered here. A barrage of questions and well-yielded stakes turned presumptions (and presumption) into dust. The agenda collapsed.

The Transport Liaison Officer of Camden (lead apparatchik) was separated from the Consultants, who took their chance to begin demonstrating (with passion, and film and graphic representations) their alternative plan for the reconstituting of a unified series of Bloomsbury Squares and the ending of the division of the quarter by the trafficking of Russell Square.

Slayers, Watchers and Angels, backed by their Councillors roared them on with helpful contributions ( notable was the Slayer for Russell Square who explained the Acts of Parliament governing the great Bloomsbury Squares and their design and planting; the opinion that there was a sub-agenda to cut off grander, institutional west Bloomsbury from livelier, residential and trading East Bloomsbury, as there has been for decades so that East Bloomsbury's poorer sectors can be 'redeveloped', was greeted with cries of 'Well said, that Angel' from the West Bloomsbury grandees, who eat, shop, and go to the pictures too. )

Camden's apparatchiks seized the Chair from the Consultants, who had the bit between their teeth by now, and were showing film from European cities of re-pedestrianisation techniques, and discussing plans for a great North Entrance to the British Museum from Montague Street, linked by these means to the University of London Senate House area (both of these public and private spaces being currently used as coach and car parks), for social mingling. "It is not your brief to discuss the coach parking which is crucial to the Olympic needs" the Lead Apparatchik roared in pain as stakes sank into him. Mingling, not coach parking for Olympic delegates, was winning. And, worse, the assembled company, whose joint IQ, and social, cultural and political connection was stratospheric, were demanding that he speak up, speak clearly, use consonants, stop mumbling, and sit up properly.

The Marchmont Street Traders and Residents were in tete-a-tete with a charming and clever Consultant on the enhancement of Marchmont, through Brunswick, across Coram's Fields and on to the Grays Inn Road; it emerged that this was the object of a separate 'Study' of which no hint had got out. Stake holders handed in their emails and credentials for that meeting too.

The Camden Lead Apparatchik finally got order and faced a cold and ceremonious questioning. The British Museum was surprised this was the second Stakeholder Workshop, what of the first? The University of London had heard nothing of any of this either; as Bloomsbury's main resident it was odd. The Chairman of the Bloomsbury Residents' Association noted that the Camden apparatchiks seemed unaware that 5000 people, many of them shift workers at the hospitals, lived where a coach park was planned for a sports festival. The Councillors enquired where was the public consultation and were given the astonishing reply that 'public consultation' would come when the Executive was good and ready.

At this point a sub prime Apparatchik stood up and began photographing the people present. The Vicar remarked that was a bit much. The photographing and videoing continued.

Walking home, it was agreed that we had seen just a flank of the monster that is the New Order - the arbitrary powers, the pretence of consultation, the hidden agendas, the sheer scale of contempt for us all, even major institutions that are not part of the Project. Most of all, the loathing by all involved, even the Consultants, of the new Order's programme.

But who are they? And why do they want to spoil the world?

Indefeasible Entitlements and Politicians' Families

The persistent citing of members of politicians' families as complexly and deeply involved in the inapproriate use of allowances and expense claims raises the question of their behaviour, regardless of the insistence by the politicians that no illegal act has been committed and that all is technically within the rules.

While politicians may indeed be acting repellently but legally, is this so of their families, friends and clients?

"Whether the acquisition of an indefeasible title to property is capable of amounting to an appropriation of property belonging to another for the purposes of section 1(1) of the Theft Act 1968." was answered in the affirmative by the Lords of Appeal, as a comment on an earlier post (about politicians' use of allowances, and the involvement of their family members and friends), knowledgeably noted, referring to Hinks.

To accept money or other payments when there is no proper or legal claim is, of itself, a criminal act. Why are all those who have done this not being investigated and prosecuted?

Cleaning Up

John Lyon, Westminster's Commissioner for Standards, has received a complaint that Mary Martin claimed over £4000 in taxi bills; that the statement that she was at all times accompanied by a House of Commons official is wholly untrue, she was accompanied by a cleaner; and that the insistence that the taxi bills were necessary expenses in the proffering of official hospitality in the Speaker's house is completely undermined by the fact that official entertaining is catered for by the Commons catering department.

It is not the Speaker who acted, it is his wife.

It seems this woman and her cleaner have spent over £4000 riding round London in taxis and charged the cost to the Speaker of the House of Commons' expense account. It is no business of the Commissioner for Standards to be determining whether or not to launch a full investigation into this matter. If there is suspected fraudulent use of official funds provided for the Speaker's duties, by another person, then the investigation should be carried out by the police.

Tax, Havens, and Gordon Brown

Condemning the world's various tax 'havens' is widespread currently. So is perverting words from earlier meanings; as a mark of the moral mindset to which Labour's regime subscribes, where 'haven' as a shelter for those in danger of the seas is pirated to those who do not wish to contribute their democratically fixed share to the society in which they float, 'haven' is a fine example.

A decade and more of Gordon Brown in the two highest offices of state has debased the United Kingdom to one of the finest tax havens on Earth.

At the same time, the taxation of the poor to support the even poorer, in the United Kingdom, has reached levels that inflict desperate damage on the modest and reasonable expectation of earning the means to house, feed, educate and care for our families, entertained by people who were brought up with clear ideas of self worth and self sufficiency. Reducing independent members of our society to supplication for means tested doles from tax garnered resources produced by their own work, is profoundly immoral.

Coupled, by Gordon Brown and his decades-long companions, with the whole United Kingdom made available for global sheltering of the resources of the rich in their wholly separate wealth environment - for it cannot be called anything with the word 'tax' in it, as the United States tax authorities have clarified when refusing to offset the £30,000 charge against the taxable income of US citizens - it must be recognised that the United Kingdom is a failed democratic state.

New Labour: the compliant herders of the poor in the playgrounds of the rich.

Brussels for Lunch

Gordon Brown has fled to Brussels to try and get the European Union to agree to £100 billion of state aid to the economically collapsed northern part of his disintegrating fiefdom. His contemptible, corrupt, lying, so-called Labour Junta has already lost Scotland and will shortly lose most of the natural resources that belonged until recently to the whole United Kingdom.

Now we can see who has to give him permission, even in England, to cover and retrieve his miserable, ill-judged political deviousness and economic incompetence.

What can the European Union buy for £100 billion?

Quasi Judicial Bodies, Quasi Legality, And Quasi Democracy

The Electoral Commission is exemplary in fulfilling the purposes of all kinds of quasi governmental institutions. Instead of confessed criminal acts being referred for prosecution, they are referred to intermediate commissions, specifically designed to interrupt democratic and judicial process in the interests of a political caste.

A number of cases of acknowleged illegal soliciting and acceptance of political funds have come up recently (mostly from the efforts of Guido to uncover and pursue them). Yet the shields built into laws passed under New Labour are, for the most part, functioning well. An MSP has just received assurance that his admitted illegal solicitation, acceptance, and determined attempts at cover up, of law-breaking donations is absolved by repayment of the single donation upon which the case was focused.

Quasi governmental organisations in all and every field attract tax-garnered funding that should be administered by elected representatives at local and even national level.

There is distaste at the construction of a nomenklatura of vetted and acceptable-to-the-Executive appointees, swilling down their ill-gotten gains from their creeping, their misrepresentations, their conformity to self-satisfied and ill-founded ideology, displaying their amoral determination to protect members of their caste always and through any vile acts performed, their corrupt purchase of office by both cash and the further misuse of office or job powers that then is reinforcing the whole self-serving structure.

Much worse is the destruction of democratic control over our world in this headlong rush to the pig swill. There is a determined use of the open, democratic society and its institutions to destroy the future controls of that society over its enemies.

Financial Satement

The Banking (Special Provisions) Bill can be downloaded.

Its definitions and provisions are so wide-ranging it is difficult to understand what is left of the financial world in any United Kingdom jurisdiction that is not to be under Treasury control, at any time and on any terms the Treasury chooses, should any Treasury intervention be Treasury-defined as assistance.

How Much Lower Can Labour Sink?

Northern Rock's small shareholders are no angels, of the North or otherwise. But they have been evilly misled.

The building society was a way in which people could take shares as well as borrow cash to facilitate meeting their housing needs; they are essentially local institutions. It was the Labour party that legislated to permit their demutualisation.

The small shareholders do not make a great distinction between shares and deposits in a local and very familiar organisation that has been there since they can remember. They understand it as still functioning as it always did, and the demutualisation put a bit of money their way for generations of financial trust and loyalty.

Over the years the small amounts they have made have not been cashed-in; often they are regarded as rainy day money, or for meeting special occasions, or for grandchildren's tertiary education. There have been real sacrifices made not to touch the money that is regarded, deposit or shares, as savings.

And now a Labour government has permitted such financial practices as have led their local financial institution into ruin, and nationalised their small resources without compensation. Enhancing a client voter base is one thing, but facilitating apparatchik enrichment by corruption and destroying independent wealth and saved resources is enslavement.

New Labour New Depths.

Nationalisation Without Compensation

The National Union of Students regularly passed such resolutions to end the evils of capitalism. Now that their former officers are in power, (though not in government for governance requires conformity to constitutional and legal provision that the Labour Junta has set aside), we can observe their jejune malignity spreading across our grown-up lives.

The destruction of any assured legal recourse against the damage that has been done to the owners of Northern Rock may at last bring home a widespread understanding of the authoritarian horror that is the Labour Executive.

Who's Next?

Alistair Darling said: "I want to make clear that the Government has no intention at present to use the Bill to bring any institution into temporary public ownership other than Northern Rock."

Temporary Nationalisation

Might as well talk of temporary death.

People's Socialist Republic of the North East Unveiled

Ron Sandler has been appointed executive chairman of the newly nationalised bank, Northern Rock, which he said would continue to have a "key role to play in the North East"

Mr Sandler is 'well known to Prime Minister Gordon Brown, and worked for the Treasury in developing the so-called stakeholder pension and investment products that were intended to help those on lower incomes save for retirement.' You couldn't make it up, to coin a phrase.

And the key role to play in the North East is either putting people out of their cars and houses and jobs, or removing the North East from the capitalist universe.

Mr Sandler has unlimited access to the taxes paid by the rest of us; the unlimited capacity of the North East's sense of justification and right to those taxes is unparalleled even in the Third Sector economics practised in New and Old Labour's heartlands and amply attested in comments offered to the press and blogs since there was a run on their overblown bank.

Smaller shareholders will doubtless be protected from their own investment foolishness; larger shareholders will probably sue the government.

Tax payers' money will continue to be sprayed across sociocultural 'initiatives' (handouts) by unaccountable foundations, and nominated bodies.

Capisci?

Another language calls for four basic skills. In ascending order of difficulty they are: reading, listening, speaking, writing.

The Qualifications and Curriculum Authority has cancelled the requirement for demonstrating the capacity to listen and to speak in the foreign language being learned, under examination conditions. It has been ruled too stressful for examination candidates.

I wonder how candidates will get on in Florence railway station asking for a ticket and holding up an irate queue of equally stressed commuters? Not to speak of being questioned by the police, a regular occurrence for English visitors to Europe these days as they mislay infant children, boyfriends, and fellow students, after a couple of bottles of wine.

Troops Home Soon

Informed Comment refers to reports in Arabic of 'a firefight that broke out on Thursday evening in the southern port city of Basra between the Mahdi Army and British troops. The fighting occurred near the al-Qiblah District in the southwestern part of the city...
A Multinational Forces spokesman said that British forces undertook an air operation Thursday evening along the strategic line that connects Basra airport with Kuwait near al-Qiblah District. The fighting did not result in any British casualties, but badly damaged a tank.' 'I was unable to find any reports of all this in Western wire services.'

Must the Leader of New Labour now prepare an announcement that British troops in Iraq will be home for Easter? Because it looks as if the decision on what happens next is out of his hands and the troops are coming home anyway.

After all, they have been marooned outside Basra airport for months now, nothing to do, under-equipped, vulnerable but for whatever deals the military of the British and Iraqi sides have negotiated, and wholly without any kind of direction from New Labour's Executive.

Brown has to answer for all this.


'I did find some pundit claiming that things were "much improved" in Basra.' remarks Informed Comment's Juan Cole; 'a British parliamentary commission found the opposite last fall.'

That'll Be the Daewoo

The damaging nonsense of building two aircraft carriers in UK shipyards, one of these days or years or millennia, that Gordon Brown announces from time to virtual time, has spread to the real world.

Six naval tankers are to be built in South Korean shipyards if the contract is obtained by BAE Systems. (Herald).

"We do not have the capacity in the UK to meet the MoD requirements and deliver the first ship (by the target date) of 2012," BAE Systems stated. BAE Systems is hoping to be awarded contracts to build bits of aircraft carrier in its yards, for delivery in 2018, or 2022, or one fine day.

The tankers will be built by Daewoo Shipbuilding & Marine Engineering Company should BAE, the 'lead' contractor (or front man) succeed in their bid for the contract for the ships; the contract is part of the Military Afloat Reach and Sustainability (MARS) programme.

And that will teach the Scottish ship yards what having a Scottish uppity government means. Pity about the real work, of which the yards are wholly capable, lost to the English ship yards in Barrow-in-Furness, pity that the building of aircraft carriers is beyond any UK shipbuilding capacity now but the pretence hands weapons to the Westminster regime, pity that £100 billion was wasted on a client base in the north east instead of the re-founding of manufacturing and heavy industry there.

There are always benefits and jam tomorrow.

Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night

The importance of the case being brought against the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, the Secretary of State for Defence, and the Attorney General by the families of two British soldiers killed in the war on Iraq is shown by the nine Law Lords who have been sitting to hear it during this week.

'The House of Lords has explained that its role is not to reverse errors in the application of settled law...', David Pannick QC writes in the Times today, and 'Since the law lords are concentrating on difficult points of law, they are more 'likely to arrive at the right answer for the right reasons, or at least give the best possible answer when the case concerns a dispute between two rights or between two wrongs, if they draw on the collective brain power and distinct legal experience of more of its members...Further, as Lord Hoffmann noted in a 1998 judgment, there are “cases in which one feels that a slight change in the composition of the Appellate Committee would have set the law on a different course”.

The Law Lords are sitting in full force then, and sitting to set the law on a course.

' The legal argument to be made before the 9 Law Lords is that the right to life, enshrined in Article 2 of the European Convention on Human rights, imposes an obligation on the government to take reasonable steps to ensure that its servicemen do not face the risk of death in military activities without taking reasonable steps to ensure that those activities are lawful. It will be argued that those reasonable steps were not taken by the Government.

This claim was previously dismissed by the Court of Appeal, which stated that the question whether the United Kingdom had acted lawfully in sending its troops to Iraq was not justiciable, since decisions of policy made in the areas for foreign affairs and defence were, in the court's view, matters for which the Government alone was responsible.'( quoted from Public Interest Lawyers).

This case is fundamental to the halting of the degradation of the United Kingdom constitution carried out by New Labour in the last decade.

Can the Executive be held to account for its actions? Once, most certainly; for the Law Lords were part of Parliament, to whom the Executive answers, until the Constitutional Reform Act of 2005 when the then Lord Chief Justice, Woolf, sold the pass.

The Law Lords themselves have been ousted by New Labour, precisely to leave an authoritarian Executive untrammeled by Parliament, but the New Labour authoritarian state has not yet ousted the Law itself. The capacity to enhance law may have been reduced but the power to uphold it remains.

Is the war on Iraq a rogue act by a proper Executive, or do we have a wholly rogue Executive?

If either, in what position does this place British troops currently in the field?

As the QC representing the two families argued in the House of Lords: 'the Government owes soldiers a special duty because they are “under the unique compulsory control of the State and have to obey orders...There is what some people call a military covenant between the State and those who are literally prepared to put their lives at risk for the sake of their country,”.

Soldiers have a covenant too with their enemy: they do not wilfully slaughter the innocent, or even those in arms against them; they do not obey unlawful orders if they can resist duress. They cannot be expected to assess the constitutionality of the Executive.

That is what the nine Lords of Appeal in Ordinary sitting here are for. Holding the Executive to account is their task and their duty.

The Phillips Curve Is not Vertical

The Bank of England's famous grant of 'independence' in 1997 by the incoming New Labour regime was as cack-handed as everything else Gordon Brown has ever touched.

Did the form of independence "promote effectively the goals of maximum employment, stable prices and moderate long-term interest rates". No, it did not.

Apart from hiving off to a Financial Services Authority the essential controls over banking behaviour and propriety, leaving the Bank of England with the research department and the skills to know what was going on but without the power to act, and the power to act in the hands of a mindless, uninformed Treasury puppet organisation, the form of independence was virtually useless in most economic climates.

All the Monetary Policy Committee can do is move the interest rate up and down

A fat lot of use that is in current circumstances.

Long Live the King!

The extension of unmet mortgage and other credit debt to everyone, not just sub prime borrowers, is well under way. The vicious circle into which the economy has been driven by Brown's blundering incomprehension of the capitalist economy (blinkered as he is by his dead ideologies and personal hubris), makes the United Kingdom one of the most vulnerable economies on the planet. No wonder he displays such fervid interest in Africa and how to intervene in failed economies there.

There are many tacitly accepted (by Northern Rock and other such lenders), self-awarded mortgage holidays being taken now. Yet the recent judgement that timely repossession is required to avoid the establishment of squatters' rights by defaulting mortgage-payers is a spur to end the practice.

If Gordon Brown seriously intends to nationalise Northern Rock we will be watching the spectacle of a Labour government repossessing the houses and cars of its bedrock support. Or we will have the public recognition that vast areas of the United Kingdom are no longer part of capitalism.

Arthur Scargill! Come on down!

In Jobs But Not in Work

Reports that as many as 2400 jobs in Northern Rock and its 'cultural foundation' will go should the United Kingdom's most successful tax avoider, Virgin, take it over from the taxpayer, give a measure of the real amount of work there is in running a regional building society. Benefits in the north east, it seems, are widely available accompanied by a cosmetic (and doubtless approved as therepeutic) pass time.

£100 billion to structure a political client base and maintain Labour authority; imagine if it had been used to develop modern manufacturing and heavy industry and encourage entrepreneurship. There might still be a ship building industry, after all, there is in Italy and Poland.

Still, five hours a week of cultural training should get all those school children up to speed for claiming their grants from the Northern Rock Foundation.

Money Where Her Mouth Is?

Hillary Clinton has funded her own campaign with $5 million, in the last few days. It is hard to imagine any reason for voting for her, but this outburst of determination appealed. Though there remains the question:

Where did she get $5 million to lend? And who is supposed to pay it back?

Sinking Under Labour

Recession has beneficial effects. Beneficial for pawn brokers, betting shops, bailiffs and the repossession business; and for driving weaker economic competitors to the wall (the list is in the Guardian of who goes down first). Leaner and meaner is not good, merely inevitable and choice restricting.

With governments it does offer the opportunity for the interventionist state to manage the misery and display fairness, decision, competence and reliability in permanence. In such unavoidable economic circumstances there can be no room for untried hands on the tiller, untried policies threatening the prudent guidance of our ship in the storm of inevitable downturn.

Labour think it's a win win. Unbridled borrowing to fund vote buying and trough guzzling, followed by managing the consequences while sustained by the frightened newly poor.

Only this is not a recession. This is a permanent alteration in global economic and, therefore, all other kinds of power. This is the permanent impoverishment of most people in the United Kingdom, worsened by Labour's abject failure to refound manufacturing industry and entrepreneurship, protect social and cultural infrastructures, regulate and profit from financial markets, install reasonable and just tax structures, encourage educational excellence and technical skills, and secure the modernisation of the state in assisting its evolution into a more effective representative democracy.

Labour's goal was permanent power. What they have achieved is mass poverty and cultural collapse, rising across undefended flood plains in our society.

Ooh Er Missus

European Trade Commisioner Mandelson told us today that Gordon Brown is now

"very firmly in the saddle".

The "cry of frustration" from Charles Clarke is evinced by

"a man who has found his bearings, who has his political compass now firmly in his grasp and who is getting on top of what it takes to be Prime Minister."

The Services and Prayers of a False Religion

Give me Benedict XVI any day before the Archbishop of Canterbury. At least he knows his Catechism.

Creditable

Standard & Poor are reported to have stated that 'the United Kingdom's "AAA" rating is not yet in danger.'

That's alright then.

Advance Australia Fair

They're building a memorial to the man who wrote the words of Waltzing Matilda - the tune is an old celtic folk song - though the words most of us know are by Marie Cowan. For all who feel like singing out (go on, you know you want to):

Waltzing Matilda

Once a jolly swagman camped by a billabong
Under the shade of a Coolibah tree
And he sang as he watched and waited till his billy boiled
You'll come a waltzing Matilda with me

Waltzing Matilda, Waltzing Matilda
You'll come a-waltzing Matilda with me
And he sang as he watched and waited til his billy boiled
You'll come a-waltzing Matilda with me

Down came a jumbuck to drink at that billabong
Up jumped the swagman and grabbed him with glee
And he sang as he shoved that jumbuck in his tuckerbag
You'll come a-waltzing Matilda with me

Waltzing Matilda, Waltzing Matilda
You'll come a-waltzing Matilda with me
And he sang as he watched and waited til his billy boiled
You'll come a-waltzing Matilda with me

Up rode the squatter mounted on his thoroughbred
Down came troopers one two three
Whose that jumbuck you've got in the tuckerbag?
You'll come a-waltzing Matilda with me

Waltzing Matilda, Waltzing Matilda
You'll come a-waltzing Matilda with me
And he sang as he watched and waited til his billy boiled
You'll come a-waltzing Matilda with me

Up jumped the swagman and sprang into the billabong
You'll never catch me alive said he
And his ghost may be heard as you pass by that billabong
You'll come a-waltzing Matilda with me.

Same difference as Land of Hope and Glory and God Save the Queen or
Va, pensiero sull'ali dorate and Ialia, Italia, really.

Guilty

The Leader of the Labour group in the Scottish parliament has confessed to breaking electoral law - law that might be thought of central importance in governing the behaviour of a politician. The Electoral Commission has stated it would not be in the public interest to prosecute her.

So who are they to be making public statements about the public interest and pretending to exclusive powers to decide on prosecution?

Tartan Tories

What is the matter with being Scottish and centre right? In passing the Budget yesterday the Scottish Nationalists achieved for Scotland policies most English and Welsh people would grab with both hands. Scotland's government has been delivering precisely what any rational and civil person would expect in a modern democracy run by sane people.

Scottish Conservatives negotiated worthwhile amendments to the Budget which were willingly accepted by the governing Party; so did the Greens, with the exception that a Green-sought interference with the development of an efficient road infrastructure was refused.

Apart from screaming 'Tartan Tories' at the Scottish National ruling party what did Labour, whose 40 representatives from Scotland in the Westminster parliament sustain Labour's authoritarian, corrupt, incompetent, detumescent elites in power over the English and the Welsh and are employed as lobby fodder in the betrayal of United Kingdom sovereignty to the European Union state, manage to do?

They voted (and abstained) against their own amendments to the Budget; amendments which had been accepted into the Budget by the ruling Scottish Nationalist Party as encouraging better training and skilling of the workforce.

None of us wish to see the break up of the United Kingdom federation of states.

None of us, though, want the 'Britain of the countries and the regions', grubbily fumbled forward by the dirtbag in Downing Street and to be ruled from Brussels, as he denies the referendum his perverted Labour party promised.

Better an independent Scotland than the use of its worthless Labour representatives at Westminster to destroy nation state independence across Europe.

Tartan Tories is a badge of honour, unsullied by that association with supporting Labour borne by the Liberal Democrats throughout the United Kingdom.

Crystal Balls

Jean-Claude Trichet started a non-renewable eight-year term as president of the European Central Bank on 1 November 2003, expiring on 31 October 2011.

Blair could not become President of the European Union without United Kingdom entry into the Eurozone. The rewards for driving ratification of the federal Europe Constitution through the Westminster Parliament (and removing permanently any UK veto over anything at all), might include the Presidency of the ECB as well if opposition to entry into the Euro is abandoned too.

Blair as the sheriff and Balls as his deputy - poor Gordon. Do you really trust your creature? Are you feeling lucky?

There's still time for a referendum.

Forward not Back

Mrs Clinton can only be described as Back (well, yes - but taking the expletives as givens). Democratic voters need a candidate that belongs in this century, not the discredited remnants of a failed politique that is ending in global economic and financial crisis.

She is the dead hand of state authoritarianism and 'planned' intervention to 'correct inequalities delivered by the market'.

More interestingly, how did the Republicans, who by any measure could have been expected to lose the next US presidential election after 8 years of George W., manoeuvre the Democrats into a nomination race between two Democratic candidates representative of essentially unsuccessful groups within American society? Indeed within any society; it may not be fashionable to recognise it, but white males win prizes, they are organized and culturally predisposed to do so.

That Hillary is there to permit the Clinton years to carry on from where they were forced to leave off makes her more deeply unattractive than any other candidate. But it may be that Obama cannot be expected to defeat a trinity of what she stands for, what Republicans want, and deep-seated cultural reserve within American society.

Cats and Dogs

Northern Rock is a billion pound dog for which Virgin is offering two half billion pound cats.

This really has to end. Even Olivant has walked away. Put the thing into administration.

Answer

One Privy Councillor writes to another Privy Councillor and requests an explanation of facts so serious that he proposes an answer on Privy Council terms. And he asks for a confirmation that there has been no change in the Wilson Doctrine that leaves members of the UK Parliament free of all surveillance.

The denial that this letter has been received is a dereliction of duty by the Prime Minister. It is his job to have the letter 'found' and reply to it.

Or to refuse to reply to it.

It's so shameful to have a Prime Minister who doesn't know how to behave.

Application

Dear Honourable Member,

Application to become a member of your extended family
______________________________________________________

Membership of an advantageous affinal and kinship network has been my ambition since I realised that my parents are unable to offer to me the benefits accessed by membership of some sorts of other families. After careful research your class of family has been identified as the most likely to offer self fulfilment coupled with self advantage.

I believe firmly that the right combination of these two life goals is most productive for both employer and employee. It ensures enthusiasm and commitment, on the part of the employee, to the furtherance of the employer's interests, areas of activity, and our returns from office.

* I enjoy working with others and relating with people who are seeking favours that will be mine to dispense and yours to provide while, at the same time, increasing the extent of our influence and clientele.

* I can communicate effectively with those from diverse cultures and of other languages using the 'British' recommended system of communication with foreigners - shout loudly in simple sentences adopting a northern English accent.

* I am ready and able to fit into any kinship category - full, step or adopted - child, sibling, parent, mother's brother, sister's son etc., - or affinal status - wife, harem, in-law, partner, one-night stand, regardless of gender or sexual orientation.

* As a cradle catholic, convent educated girl I can adopt any religious or cultural stance required; there's always confession.

My full curriculum is unprintable but can be accessed at interview.

Seigniorage and Sleight of Hand

Seigniorage is the amount of resources accruing to the state in a given period by virtue of its monopoly on the issue of money. There are various ways of computing seigniorage, the most popular being the real value of the increase in the money supply over that period. This is no small matter, for in a modern economy it amounts to at least 1-2 per cent of GDP.

This benefit accrues, in the first instance, most usually to the Central Bank, or to any other institution issuing the currency. Countries have different ways of handling it but in one way or another it ultimately benefits the government budget, into which it flows wholly or partly as a specific transfer (as in the US, where the Fed pours tens of billions of dollars into the federal budget every year), or as a tax on Central Bank profits (as in Poland), or as an increase in the value of Central Bank assets if owned by the state (as in the European Central Bank where states are shareholders, though they can't sell the shares and cash in the seigniorage unless they withdraw from the common currency). When the Central Bank is wholly or partly in private hands (as in Italy) seigniorage sits in the Bank, even if kept off balance sheet, instead of being paid out to private shareholders.

The arrangements in Scotland are more like a Currency Board, with the private banks of issue having to back Scottish banknotes with pound sterling deposits on a 1 to 1 basis, though only for three days a week. Thus seigniorage accrues to the banks of issue only in the proportion of 4/7. It is not clear who is the ultimate beneficiary of Scottish seigniorage but presumably the Scottish government by one of the mechanisms described.

What is clear is that the Treasury attempt to grab those 4/7ths of Scottish seigniorage (under the pretence of extending protective measures against bank failures equally throughout the UK) robs the Scottish beneficiary or beneficiaries - whether private or public - of their due.

Scotland would be better off in this at least, were it to join the euro, in which case it would retain a claim to a share of euro-seigniorage as a European Central Bank shareholder.

Yahoo, a Packet of Woodbines, and Change

...is what you could get for our taxes thrown away on boring Northern Rock.

A Run on the Country

Northern Rock is to receive last and final bids tomorrow. There are only two contenders for: a worthless mortgage book - who would want to buy a bog standard house in the north east of England? - a NuLabour clients' pay-outs Foundation, large but unspecified local infrastrucure commitments, and a featherbedded workforce with fully unionised-up redundancy and pension rights.

Unless this socialist, regional experiment masquerading as a bank failure is ended with the placing of the bank in administration where it has belonged for years, there will be a situation like Argentina in 2002; though without a Currency Board perhaps German hyper-inflation of the nineteen twenties will model for us all.

The North East and its collapsed Labour planning model presents as much of a threat to the rest of the country now as its unionised heavy industry and mining sector did in the second half of the last century.

The Gift

The Leader of the Labour party in the Scottish Paliament 'has been reported to the procurator fiscal for failing to register her leadership campaign donations' (Sunday Herald).

She now faces a police investigation and possible charges if the fiscal concludes the offence warrants a criminal sanction.

Dr Jim Dyer, the Standards Commissioner, had been investigating Alexander's compliance with the Scottish parliament's rules on registering gifts. The Standards Commissioner had notified Alexander that any donations she received over £520 should have been registered as gifts; he has concluded there was evidence the Labour leader broke the rules on declaring gifts. Alexander and the Parliament's Standards Committee have been notified by Dr Dyer of his actions.

The Memorandum of Agreement between the Standards Commissioner and the Crown Office states:

"..if the commissioner is satisfied, in relation to any complaint that the member has committed the conduct complained about, and the conduct would, if proved, constitute a criminal offence, the commissioner shall: a) suspend investigation and consideration of the complaint; b) submit a report to the procurator fiscal and c) notify the committee".

The Labour parliamentary leader is also being investigated by the Electoral Commission for accepting 'an illegal £950 donation from Jersey tycoon Paul Green.'

Perverting the Course of Social Justice

Unemployment, bankruptcy, repossession of houses, lack of credit, accompanied by despair, hunger, fear, cold, and powerlessness stare cruelly at us. At us, not other people. Many people are already coping with some of these; all of us are coping wih inflation (the official inflation rate, the Consumer Price Index, is only 2.1%. but that excludes such things as council tax, energy bills and mortgage costs) and even coping with one of these is hard to bear.

Each wave of the recession will take a new and better-defended group; already unemployment is advancing, credit is withdrawn from the weakest (banks have told nearly 200,000 people to cease any use of their credit cards from Monday), remortgaging is harder and so expensive, right now.

Now is the moment when Gordon Brown chooses to withdraw assistance from the poor. He wouldn't act against freeloading when the booming world economy offered the chance to earn their living to all - then his regime bought votes with working people's taxes, and rewarded Party minions with sinecures dressed as work. He wouldn't prepare for the wholly predictable downturn in the economic cycle, for the re-founding of manufacturing industry and provide an encouraging environment for anything other than a giant 'light regulatory touch' (read free for all) financial casino, using its spin-off to reward client voters and construct a tax-funded permanent governance of complacent political appointees.

The enormous shortfall in tax revenues occurring as the credit and spend economy collapses has produced the New Labour New Tough stance on claimants just as claimants begin to be made up of the genuinely unemployed, the genuinely ill thrown into despair by uncontrollable economic and social circumstances created by the fools and knaves of the Brown years; people who have worked and payed their insurance contributions and other taxes to support the client state now face denial of the security for bad times they thought they had paid for.

The man is perverse.

Undoing the Damage

After the Scottish Government's Minister of Finance yesterday told quango and public agency chiefs that they will be forced to move out of under-used buildings, he expressed surprise at some refusing to accept they must move into smaller offices from large, expensive offices .

The Prime Minister of Scotland is delivering on his pledge to cut by at least a quarter some two hundred agencies that were running government services at arm's length when he took office after the Labour regime was defeated, despite their best election-rigging efforts, last May.

A spokesman, setting out the first list of those to be removed or merged, explained that the action is "a significant step on the way, not an end to the process".

These non-departmental public bodies are wholly appointed and unresponsive to direct democratic control. Bluntly, they are stuffed with former ruling- regime Party placemen, and sinecure-holders rewarded for various Party services, enjoying high salaries and terms of service, including gold-plated pensions.

The seeding of governance with out-sourced and out of reach, yet publicly-funded centres of power, in areas from planning, through health and social services, to pseudo cultural, sporting, and formerly charitable functions, is a major source of maintenance in power, even when voted out of office, of the New Labour Project.

Repeatedly these nomenklatura apparatchiks of the former regime have delayed and hindered economic development in Scotland, the latest example being planning body foot-dragging over the renewal and extension of the Aviemore tourist industry; tourism is an important part of the development of the Scottish economy.

Scotland's experience of undoing this New Labour permanent regime structure is an eye opener in the arrogant entrenchment of its personnel, and the determined smearing of their nemesis with false accusations of corruption and political and personal gain, by the Labour party itself.

It is not just a matter of defeating them at the polls, should England have its chance and take it. Their long march through the institutions must be accurately tracked, and their removal accompanied by the dismantling of their state.

Part Time Defence Ministers and Half Trained Soldiers

There are some 5000 British troops doing not a lot, except for being desultorily rocketed, outside Basra airport. At the same time the troops being sent to Afghanistan are reported to be 'half trained'. The periods between active service are being cut so that even properly trained troops return to active duty again and again without respite.

Why are there still British troops in Iraq? Why are there still British troops in Germany?

And for the sheer horror of what is happening in Iraq as the country is talibanised and women are murdered, disfigured or, in the case of countless widows, left to starve to death together with their children as no public role or employment is now open to them, look at Informed Comment (on Links) if you can bear to read it.

Brown Blinks

Mervyn King's reappointment as Governor affirms and continues Brown's long record as graceless; a sulky grudge-bearer. The competence of the Governor's running of the Bank and its delivery of objectives has been marred only by the removal of some of the Bank's powers in Brown's inept and power-grabbing dividing off of any central bank's functions in financial control and regulation, when he was forced to provide an independent central bank as part of the move towards joining the Euro zone in 1997. As Chancellor of the Exchequer he was determined to thwart New Labour project intentions of a smooth accession for the United Kingdom into full participation in the EU and Blair's advance to the office of EU president.

Cutting off his nose to spite his face, he ended with Blair retaining the premiership for 10 years, and the utter public shame of his meddling causing a bank run and the exposure of grossly inappropriate financial practices going unchecked for years in pursuit of obscure socialist agendas in the north east.

The presentation of the meeting between Merkel, Sarkozy, Barroso and Prodi in London as a discussion of measures to deal with financial transparency, regulation and response to the threatened (indeed effectively if not technically, arrived) recession, was the usual misrepresentation; certainly financial regulation and stability were discussed, in terms of the price of permitting Brown to save his Northern Rock face.

The European Union financial regulators will permit his bond issue which allows the pretence of a private solution to spraying £60 billion of taxpayers' money plus further guarantees over the economic and financial debacle in the north east of England. The Prime Minister of the Britain of the Nations and the Regions will deliver the United Kingdom cut and bound into the European Union, without veto, without even representation in some years, but with decorative red lines.

At least Mervyn King is good enough to ignore the insults and continue holding the fort.

Fathers and Sons

If the Member for Old Bexley and Sidcup paid money for years to his son for work the son was in no position to carry out, yet the son took the money, in what position does that place the son?

Dacha

Deep in our hearts we associate green, ecological, reponsible planet-saving behaviour with strict,parsimonious,self-flagellating (metaphorically speaking), severity of life. Going to stay at the newly completed eco house up the hill, I had bought the beds in just this frame of mind. 1930's strength through joy has expressed itself in beds as hard as boards.

Rising woodenly this morning the utter silence was impressive until opening the shutters allowed a rupture in the hermetically sealed indoor environment; if there are layers of glass and insulation to keep in the heat they keep out sound, completely - birdsong, wind, trees, passing fauna, the fountain - being inside looking out is like a silent film, all it needs is a man playing the piano. Listening to the breakfast things being washed-up in the kitchen was not what I'd expected for my first morning's sound track.

It all works: the woodburning boiler for when the solar panels need sunshine; the gravity fed water tanks from springs underground; the ancient Romans would admire the underfloor heating system;the electricity virtually free with an advantageous arrangement with the electricity company; the kitchen garden rampaging with vegetables that can't be eaten fast enough. All that is needed is the collapse of the world as we know it.
'Is this how it will be?'
''Believe in capitalism. In markets and their mechanisms of self-adjustment. It works.'
'What are we doing here then?'
'It's nice for the weekend.'

Persona in Vista

People in the public eye do not submit their tax returns on-line. The levels of data protection provided by the tax man are not high enough to prevent the theft of sensitive personal information - such as full name, previous names, date of birth, national insurance number, bank details, family status and, by no means least, full address. And lots, lots more.

If this creation of a ruling caste by the Labour regime persists its members will be more than in the public eye - they will be in the public's sights.

Leading Cardinals

A prince of the Catholic Church, and leading Cardinal, Bagnasco, has denied that the unspeakable scenes in the Italian Senate last evening, (when Whips of the extreme right Opposition spat on centre right Opposition senators, and howled 'squalide checche!' - disgusting queers! - as part of the centre right voted to support the centre government in office) are anything to do with the bitter, rabidly homophobic and anti- civil partnership stances engendered, encouraged and manipulated from within the Vatican.

Excusatio non petita, accusatio manifesta.

Just the One?

'Given the nature of the offence under Section 65 (3) of the Political Parties Elections and Referendums Act 2000, which creates an offence of strict liability which is committed regardless of whether it is deliberate or negligent', writes the Huntsman (on whose legal arm Angels would lay their sleeping head), 'he [Peter Hain] should have gone the moment that he admitted failing to comply with the reporting requirements under Section 65 (1) of the Act in relation to the huge amounts of money his campaign received in the latter half of 2007.'

If Hain then, surely Harman too, and most certainly Wendy Alexander (unless it's different in Scotland - it often is these days).

The Neath Police Dismisseth Us

Leith, actually but - Hic - do Angels care?

Scottish police can do Alexander, and English ones Harman, and international upholders of the law for Brown and his warmongering years with Blair.

Rubbish Government

Rubbish and its removal is central to any local government; clean streets, well lit - these are prime local issues to be settled by local democracy. Nothing could illuminate better the threat lowering over the United Kingdom and its governance from ratification of the federal European Constitution, than the rubbish going on about the rubbish in Naples.

Berlusconi, (repeatedly indicted criminal saved by ad personam legislation), threatens to bring the people onto the streets, but all he can bring onto the streets is rubbish. Bossi, former communist and leader of the Northern Leagues of racialists and separatists, calls for guns to be used - over rubbish.

The Prime Minister of a sovereign European state is already driven to seek votes of confidence in the Chamber of Deputies (lower house) and in the Senate (upper house) of the Italian Parliament, over rubbish.

Romano Prodi, with far faster political reactions than the United Kingdom's lumbering, state authoritarian, Honecker-style, Labour Leader, has organised his local council leader successor (currently Mayor of Rome), and is hoping to go fry better fish in Brussels and Berlin.

President of Europe is one thing, while clearing up criminal elements' interference with local rubbish collection, or low-level Vatican attacks on anti-discrimination measures against the way people choose to live - a moral and cultural concern, never a political matter - is wholly another.

State-level politics is about economics, foreign policy, the migration of peoples, the relationships of power and individuals and the collective. Not about rubbish, or homosexuality for that matter.

And Prodi, advised by the ultimate Dottor' Sottile, Amato, (who has jailed the real threat to life-style in Italy, the 70 mafia black economy criminals imprisoned since he became Minister of the Interior), is wholly willing to leave the local government of the European Region of Italy to those politicians fitted for it.

Assured in his leaving a tidy desk for his successor as regional mayor, (and head of a consolidated, centre-left, pluralist political party), he can turn his energies and extraordinary political capacities to gaining the prize for which Blair signed the United Kingdom into regional local governance and which, despite Blair's ultimate political act, the betrayal of his country, is not Blair's to grasp or even claim.

If the United Kingdom Parliament permits the ratification of the European Union Constitution signed by Blair in his overweening ambition, and counter-signed by Brown in his mannerless cowardice, it will be left to deal with rubbish, without even the consolation of the presidency of the new European state and a part to play in real politics.

The Blair for European Union President Set Up

If the Conservatives can make alliance with large Labour factions to enable the educational reform bills to pass and establish the academies programme, then presumably channels are open to work for a damaging hold-up to the ratification process.

The suspicion must be that the blatant nods and winks in Blair's direction as potential EU president are there to deter such a provision of alliance from Blair's Labour party faction. Should it all go through smoothly, is the pretence, Blair will be in over all charge, and you will be rewarded in the paradise of the New Europe, and old Labour exile will be irrelevant.

But Blair has no credibility or acceptability to the EU hard core (and the new accession states are all to some degree clients of that hard core) - the UK policy of enlarge the Union and dilute the federalist dream has been defused and the EU is merely far bigger than it might have been before this ill-conceived policy was pursued by the UK; but the intention has not been forgotten - and, further, no member-state outside the inner Euro circle can provide a president.

Blair's wing in the parliamentary Labour party should note how powerless they are, both in the mass party and the sectoral (principally trade union base), and form alliance that strengthens their policies, not with hold alliance for a hopeless dream of presidential EU power.

Further, even if they will not act on principle, they can, like the member for Edgbaston, recognize that there might be individual, constituency, electoral advantage in joining to the national, rather than Party, interest in confounding the destruction of UK, (and other European nation state), sovereignty.

People wish to be of Europe, but not drowned in it. And should an election ever come again, will support those of whatever formal Party who put a spoke in the wheel of European federalism.

Politics and its Practice

Hungary is the only member-state of the European Union to have ratified the Lisbon Treaty, although it has not yet deposited the ratification documentation with the government of Italy. Next in line is Slovenia, which does not seem to be resisting and should have completed the process by the end of the month. Then France in February, followed by the United Kingdom in March. Every other member-state has yet to determine the date for ratification proceedings.

Most member-states appear to be saving their breath to cool their porridge until after March. So there has been: a couple of absolute certs to get the ball rolling; followed by a recalcitrant but governable France denied anything but a well disciplined parliamentary ratification, probably with any fireworks as carefully controlled as Lewes on Bonfire Night, pour encourager les autres; then the non-communitaire United Kingdom, its Parliament used to deliver its people under the Labour majority knout, in return for the European Union ignoring flagrant Labour state intervention to hold together the collapsing Brown economy.

There will be a flurry of ratification procedures before the summer, with Ireland probably earlier than most as the Irish may have to try more than once in their referendum until they get the right answer.

There is almost certainly a majority in the UK for remaining in the European Union, as there is in the other EU member-states for their continued membership; but there is much less certainty on a majority for the form of Union embodied in the new constitution in many member-states. Resistance in our Parliament to ratification lends strength to all those others opposed to the ending of the sovereignty of Europe's nation states, as the carefully orchestrated crescendo of ratification shows.

Is it beyond the skills of the opposition parties to form ad hoc alliances, and political exchanges with parts of the Labour coalition, to slow or halt the ratification process, without withdrawing consent to membership on other terms to the EU? And by that process, too, damage one of the most corrupt, unrepresentative, failing, and incompetent Westminster regimes since Callaghan, or even Eden.

Leading Cadres

Reports have appeared .. that the Greater London Authority has not answered questions [no need to ask questions, the political record of these people is public knowledge, they are leading members of an extreme left organisation most recently known as Socialist Action, though given the speed at which these groups splinter and spawn, can probably deny the group even exists today] regarding the political views of members of staff. This misunderstands the legal relationship between the Greater London Authority and all its staff. [No it doesn't. All are quite aware of the legal position of an employer. That does not alter political interest in their employees public, often expressed allegiances, agendas and their actions while members of staff in the London Mayor's Office] The Greater London Authority does not politically vet potential or existing employees, nor carry records regarding their political views, [that is not what is being discussed. What is under scrutiny is the political and socio-cultural and economic agenda and it's implementation by key staff appointed by Livingstone] and it would indeed be unlawful, and a breach of employment and human rights, for it to do so. Employees of the Greater London Authority are therefore entitled to hold whatever political views they choose within the law [again, the matter is what are they actually doing, what objectives have they been pursuing and implementing in the Mayor's Office, and is that responding to democratically expressed preferences of voters or answering to another political set of imperatives altogether?] and the Greater London Authority will vigorously uphold the right to do so.

The only important, and lawful, [we're not doing law here, we're doing politics and, under the Third Way and its Third Sector objectives, the current laws and current political practice are widely and demonstrably separating, with politically sanctioned action - legal or not, winning hands down] criteria [quite wrong, the criteria are for the electorate to choose to set not their state servants] regarding the record of Greater London Authority staff is to be found in policies that have been successfully delivered. [the policies have been delivered but have they been what was wanted? what was needed in the capital of the United Kingdom, not the capital of some socialist authoritarian post democratic nightmare?] These have directly contributed to making London a more successful city. [Angels refers readers to other bloggers, try Newmania, on London as a successful city, and the flight of families from the capital].

Nor is there mystery regarding policies of the people referred to in reports of Martin Bright’s Dispatches programme. All have been employed in leading positions in the Greater London Authority for more than seven years and the policies they have implemented or developed under the Mayor are therefore matters of abundant public record. [and just look at the state the capital is in - even the Home Secretary dare not walk alone in London streets after dark, and she's got a bodyguard. Children murdering children, pensioners beaten to death, robbery rampant, policemen walking the beat in Angels' part of London are at hens' teeth levels, a public transport system not just inadequate but laughable in comparison with Paris, Brussels, any major German city, and the whole under a miasma of greasy dirt and trodden in fast food] They hold high reputations for competence not only in the Greater London Authority but in the areas of policy and activity for which they have responsibility under the Mayor. [hardly likely to be otherwise as they are also the owners of considerable reputations as work bullies and excluders of those not part of their group or its clients] To take the senior staff named in reports concerning the Dispatches programme the Greater London Authority therefore specifically rejects the assertion that these persons are other than highly competent in the discharge of their functions and therefore states that they are properly employed by the Greater London Authority. [no-one says their employment is improper under the rules or the law. Their employment is unacceptable under the exercise of democracy and answerability to the people who pay their various taxes both in London and, for the rest of the country taxes that contribute to the funding of central government and the European Union] Specifically, under the Mayor:

* Simon Fletcher has served as the Mayor’s Chief of Staff since 2000. He is responsible for overall relations with the government, for day-to-day co-ordination of activity by the Mayor’s Office and Directors, for liaison with the functional bodies of the GLA Group, and the practical preparation of major policy statements by the Mayor. This role has, in the last seven years, assisted in effectively delivering the programme priorities set by the Mayor’s including on public transport, investment in the police service, policies to protect the environment and tackle climate change, increase affordable housing, measures to ensure all Londoners can participate in London’s success, such as concessionary fares schemes, and support for London’s character as a tolerant and diverse international city.... [Londoners would prefer policies to reflect London's status as their home town and as capital of the United Kingdom, rather than emphasize an internationalism that expresses itself in schools where English is now a minority language, where illegal immigrants are security staff in government offices, where the criminality of underdevelopment is imported to compete at the highest levels with a perfectly satisfactorily provided home-grown criminality, that frightens all ordinary citizens into locking themselves and their lives in at night and for much of the rest of their social, cultural and economic existence, where there has been a collapse of such proportions in simply counting the numbers of incomers that public services cannot cope for those already here or those arriving].


* Redmond O’Neill is Director of Transport and Public Affairs. He has worked with Transport for London’s senior management on all major transport issues in London on a day-to-day basis for seven years. He oversaw the development of the Mayor’s Transport Strategy, led in the Mayor’s Office on negotiations with government which secured the first big increase in transport grant for the capital and worked closely with TfL senior management on the introduction of the congestion charge, and the huge improvements to London’s bus system. [But it is the Underground that is and has always been London's principal transport system, and it is both a disaster now and a killing disaster waiting to happen, running only a limited number of hours in 24, breaking down for lack of planning and investment - 7 years this socialist authoritarian boasts of, and still without any solution to investment and a proper maintenance programme -] On Public Affairs, Mr O’Neill has been responsible for the broadest programme of community engagement in the UK, including the establishment of London’s series of major community events ranging from St Patrick’s Day to the Jewish Simcha on the Square, to the Olympic Torch Relay and the now internationally famous annual New Year’s Eve fireworks display at the London Eye. [Now we know who has been spending our taxes to maintain the circuses element, we know already who was doing the bread part, for the clientele]



* John Ross is Director of Economic and Business Policy. He led the team within the Mayor’s Office responsible for campaigning for, and successfully securing, £16 billion for the construction of Crossrail.[No, he led the team doubtless, he's a Leading Cadre and trousers the pay and perks as such, but Crossrail was a central government decision, part of the price paid by Gordon Brown for preventing challenge to his candidature for Leader, and thus becoming prime minister without an English vote having been fired either within the Labour party or within the country]. He was responsible for determining the economic projections for the London Plan,[ there's a frightening thought, John Ross is an economist to be compared with Brown and Balls rolled together (sorry)] which provides the overall framework of strategic policy by the GLA. He was responsible for the successful reorganisation of tourism promotion in London. [Bit of a policy collision with Simon Fletcher's environment protection delivery there then, mass tourism being the second bane after Brown] He has overseen planning for the strategic future development of the West End. [Did we know there is such planning? Well, yes, those of us in very central London have felt that secret agenda sensation as we struggle to supply a thriving neighbourhood with a secondary school, and interrupt and obstruct our engulfment by the extension of the West End shopping streets, and London University - the big new intellectual supermarket for the globalised world.] He was involved in the successful winning of the Olympic Games for London. [sack him now!] He is responsible for the Mayor’s relations with the London business community and the London Business Board. [London's business community can comment on that themselves].


There are others included in this press release from the Mayor's Office at the GLA but Angels don't know about them so they have become ....

Looking at what these people have responsibility for, and our tax-raised wealth to spend on - bearing in mind this is only their day job work-specifications - the experiment of England's regionalisation of which London is the exemplar, is as saddening and repellent as the coming to power of New Labour.