Author Archives: Mark Griffin

It’s not Gordon’s fault

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All the attention lately seems to be on Gordon Brown, when will he step down or when he will be ousted if he doesn’t go voluntarily. Everyone is blaming him for Labour’s current difficulties. If “difficulties” is the right word, it seems to be a weasel-word used by those who lack the moral fibre to say it like it is. “He is a difficult child,” someone might say of a seriously dysfunctional, out of control brat. Or, “It was a difficult crossing,” someone else might say about the maiden voyage of the Titanic. And that’s about it, really, they’re sunk, so get rid of Gordon. But it’s not his fault.

While Gordon is indeed the Prime Minister, he isn’t the only one in the cabinet. The “iceberg in the corner of the room,” if I may mix my metaphors, is the incompetence of the entire cabinet. Everyone surely knows it, but nobody will talk about it. If a camera was allowed into a cabinet meeting and it panned around the table showing each minister in turn, you could categorise them, one after the other, “Useless, useless, useless.” Every man jack of them. The only exception would be those who are “dangerously incompetent” instead, like Alistair Darling or Jacqui Smith. Labour is in it’s current difficulties not because of one man, but because of a couple of dozen men and women. They should all go.

That still wouldn’t solve Labour’s problem, though. The Labour back-benches are full of has-beens that never should have been in the first place. There are very few exceptions because the Blair legacy is one of filling the Parliamentary Labour Party with apparatchiks and researchers, clueless about the real world, but well skilled in manoeuvring within the party and therefore contemptuous of the democratic process. That is how we can have a Labour government that increases taxation on the lower paid while falling over itself to appease the super-rich. That passes Draconian laws to suppress peaceful protests while swindling the police over their pay. That promises to listen to us while denying us a vote on the European Constitution. The list is just too long to detail, the ruination of the NHS, the underfunding of the armed forces, the chaos of immigration, those few gripes only scratch at the surface of the problems. Difficult times indeed.

There is nothing we can do about it. The Labour Party was elected with a five year mandate, and Gordon Brown still has two years of it to play with. The House of Lords has been emasculated, it can no longer provide a check or counterbalance to the House of Commons. There is no mechanism, as there is in the United States, for a “Recall” vote to cause an election to be re-run if the winner fails to live up to his or her election promises. There is no prospect of the Queen dismissing Brown and causing a general election. Constitutionally we are in unchartered waters. A party in power with a huge majority in parliament, and a country with no confidence in it whatsoever. Did we celebrate the downfall of the Soviet Union too soon?

An economy run by Arts graduates?

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Sam Leith writes an excellent piece in the Telegraph today essentially saying that Arts Graduates know nothing about how the economy works because it is unknowable. That’s a good point. On that basis, the present sorry government must be Arts Graduates of the highest calibre because the Prime Minister and his Chancellor demonstrate how much they don’t know about the economy on a daily basis. Leith gives credit to those who work in the City and assumes they must be great experts in the economy. There I must disagree. The mistake, which I think a lot of people make, is to confuse what drives the City with what drives the economy. There couldn’t be a greater gulf between the two even though the City has a great impact on the economy as a whole.

Those who succeed in the City, and many do in spectacular style, do so not because they know how the economy works, but because they know how the City works. That should not be a subtle distinction. The reputation of the City has taken a pounding recently, and probably deservedly so, because everything to do with the economy is causing great concern to ordinary people whose daily lives are blighted by miscalculations, misjudgment, or just plain mischief.

That concern was enough to give the Labour government its worst electoral defeat in living memory. The Crewe bye-election will be another opportunity to give them another black-eye. Over in America, things are hardly any better. They have a presidential election taking place right now which provides an insight into some of their concerns. One such is the NAFTA trade agreement which came under fire recently as the cause of American jobs being ‘exported’ to Mexico. We have a similar problem here, but does anyone seriously believe that jobs are going to India or China because wage rates in the third world are so much lower than they are here? Only an Arts Graduate could believe that. The reason jobs are being exported is because City bosses earn huge bonuses from exporting them. If they didn’t earn such bonuses, those jobs would not be exported. Of course I use the word ‘earn’ in the loosest possible sense, in the sense of an athlete who ‘earns’ a gold medal by taking steroids or a mugger who ‘earns’ money by waving a knife in someone’s face. They are merely working the system.

And that’s the root of the problem. It is a system. A system of rules and regulations, of treaties and trade agreements that provide endless opportunities for smart operators to work it to their personal advantage. In what possible way, for example, can it be good for the American economy that an investor can buy into Yahoo! after it had turned down a takeover bid from Microsoft, and then sue the board for rejecting it? He had no involvement in the business beforehand, no concern for the nature of the business, or the interests of its customers or suppliers, but now he can hope to have the bid reopened and see his share-holding soar in value as a consequence. All perfectly legal and proper so far as Wall Street is concerned, of course, but absurd that a market can be manipulated in this way. Plainly Wall Street, and the City, do not facilitate the economy, they distort it. Likewise NAFTA and all the myriad of similar treaties do not create free trade, they interfere with it.

Someone who did know about the economy, and knew it very well, was Adam Smith. When he extolled the virtues of a ‘free market’ he wasn’t writing about a market that was closely regulated to somehow make it ‘free’, he wasn’t writing about states that had treaties to ensure ‘free’ trade between them. ‘Free’ to him meant free from all such interferences in the first place. It would be the invisible hand of self-interest that would drive free trade and ensure it stayed free. He would be astounded by an economy that barred imports that competed with local produce, intervened to buy up surplus stocks to maintain an artificially high price, dumped that surplus stock on third world countries, and in consequence ruined those markets for their local farmers and producers. Such is the EU vision of an economy. He would be equally astounded by an economy that enabled exotic fruit and vegetables to be flown half way around the world, at significant cost to the environment, to be sold at rock-bottom prices, while at the same time fuel prices are soaring and motorists are penalised to reduce their so-called carbon foot-print. This is not an economy that is capable of being understood.

We need reform. In Arts Graduate terms, economics has become like the Turner Prize, devoid of all social worth and intellectual merit. It is ripe for those with no understanding of the real world to exploit and manipulate to their own ends, the people who should matter are shut out. So we need reform across the board, from the City to farming as well as manufacturing, but most of all, we need reform of our government. Capitalism, for that is what is at stake, is as unworkable now as communism was, and look what became of that.

Walter Al-Mitty

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Who remembers Neil and Christine Hamilton? The Tory MP and his wife, ruined over the cash-for-questions affair? Booted out of Parliament by a white-clad Martin Bell, then bankrupted and forced onto the z-list celebrity circuit to scrape a living. Where are they these days?

I only ask because I watch the antics of their main protagonist with mounting incredulity. Mohammed Al-Fayed, long known as the Phoney Pharaoh to Private Eye readers, has been in the courts and our papers spouting his extraordinary theories about Prince Philip and MI6 and their plot to murder Princess Di. If you put edited highlights of their lives side by side, Fayed and Hamilton, which one carries himself with dignity, and which one is the court jester? Which one is the real human being, and which one is the caricature?

I don’t know Hamilton or Fayed personally, all I know about them is what I see in that distorting lens which is the media, yet the difference between them is stark. If we go back to the cash-for-questions affair therefore and ask ourselves which one of these two we believe, I can’t think anyone would now side with Fayed. Do you find him credible? I was never convinced the charge was that serious in the first place, even if true it is mind-numbingly trivial by the standards of what passes for our corrupted government today.

But I don’t think it is enough simply to say that even if it was true, it wasn’t serious. The consequences to the Hamiltons were devastating. And the root cause of that devastation is the man who stands up in court and tells the world that Prince Philip is a Nazi, that he ordered MI6 to murder Princess Di, that she was pregnant with Dodi’s child, and that Prince Charles also plotted to murder her, and so on, and so on, and so on.

You had to wonder, when you read these extraordinary allegations before, if they were what he really believed or whether the reports were exaggerated. But he has now said all of this and more on oath, in court. And so there it all is, word for word, the evidence that he is living in a fantasy world. You also had to wonder when the cash-for-questions affair was raging in the media which side was telling the truth. Well on the evidence of Fayed’s testimony in Court yesterday, this particular jury of one has returned with an unequivocal verdict: Hamilton is entirely innocent.

How much is Free Speech worth?

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There’s an old saying along the lines that something free is only worth what you paid for it, or put another way, if it’s free it isn’t worth having. So what of free speech? What good does it actually do us? I can see how in times past it was a serious matter that you should be able to criticise the king without fear of losing your head, or challenge religious orthodoxy, or develop new scientific thinking. Free speech has enabled civilisation to advance, it was crucial to the spread of new ideas, new thinking, new understanding. But as crucial as it was, free speech did not represent new ideas, new thinking or new understanding, it was merely the tool to bring them about. Today we have a lobby that worships free speech as if it were an end in itself. There is a scene in “Life of Brian” where the fleeing anti-hero loses a sandal and some of the chasing mob pick it up and worship it. Free speech should be something we use to get from A to B, like a sandal, and that’s all it is. That’s not to say it’s bad, that’s not to say we shouldn’t have it, that’s not an attack on free speech as a concept.

Where we do have a problem with free speech is with the zealots who worship it and who strive to extend it’s boundaries beyond reason, the sandal worshipers in that Python film in other words. To them, it is perfectly okay to insult Christians, it is perfectly okay to insult Jews and it is perfectly okay to insult Moslems. To them, free speech is paramount, it matters above all else. If they see that any Moslems, for example, are offended by cartoons mocking the Prophet then it becomes a matter of principle to them to torment those Moslems beyond endurance. Free speech is paramount. Free speech must prevail. The Christians and Jews have already been beaten into submission by the free speech lobby, but is that right? To complain or criticise on the basis of reasoned rational thought is one thing, but should it be acceptable to insult anyone for no reason other than to extend the limits of free speech? It is almost a religious obsession with some of the free speech fanatics, just criticise them and see the reaction. The irony would be lost on them.

The problem is that free speech is not being used to advance new ideas, new thinking or new understanding. It has been hijacked by those who are intolerant. To them the feelings of other people are an irrelevance before the altar of free speech. No one who is hurt to see their sincerely-held faith mocked, or is offended by foul or abusive language, actually matters. Indeed, it sometimes seems they are deliberately targeted for offence. Free speech did not come to us for free, it was hard won and a high price was paid for it. Right now we have lost it, and it is not doing us any good. On the one side we have whistle-blowers trying to tell us about corruption in Europe and who are being suppressed. Where are the free speech zealots when you need them, banging their drums and demanding attention? On the other side we have idiot Danish cartoonists who become a cause celebre instead. We need to win back free speech, it is too important to allow the zealots to run riot with. I am never going to stand up and defend the right of someone to be gratuitously offensive.

Incitatus honoured

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Another day, another new metaphor to describe the shamelessness of this government. Today the metaphor is Caligula who wanted to make his favourite horse a Consul just to annoy the Senate. He didn’t actually do it, apparently, but Gordon Brown is not as shy as that well-loved Roman and he will miss no opportunity to annoy us. Step forward three donkeys of public service, Tom Kelly, Debby Reynolds and Richard Summerskill.

Those with long memories will recall that we are in this mess in Iraq because we were lied to by the government over Saddam’s weapons of mass destruction. One man tried to speak out, and well qualified he was to do so too. But his credibility and reputation were publicly shredded, leading him to commit suicide. For his services to the country Tom Kelly, the government spokesman at the time, is given the Order of the Bath. The same honour goes to the Government’s former chief vet Debby Reynolds, who was in charge when foot and mouth and avian flu struck these shores. Thank heavens her efforts fell short of meriting a peerage. But spare a thought for Richard Summerkill who must feel short-changed after his department lost the personal and banking details of every family in the country and yet he only walks away with a CBE. Bad luck, Dick, try harder next time.

There you go, Caligula, for a master lesson in how to abuse the people you govern, look and learn from Emperor Gordon.

Is democracy viable?

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I was thinking in the aftermath of the Bhutto assassination that we hadn’t really succeeded in leaving a legacy of democracy behind as we pulled out of former colonies and left them to rule themselves. Then I wondered, “What does it take for democracy to work in the Third World?” Then like a thunderbolt it hit me – we don’t even have democracy in this country, so who am I kidding? Describing Benazir Bhutto’s murder as a “sad day for democracy,” as Gordon Brown has done is risible. It is a monumental disaster for Pakistan and a huge setback for world peace. A “sad day for democracy” was when Gordon Brown took over as Prime Minister without an election.

So while we wait helplessly for the bloodbath to ensue in Pakistan, let’s consider the miserable state we’re in. We watch the news and we read the papers and we lament. A lying, incompetent government signs away our freedom to Europe without so much as a by-your-leave. Their hypocrisy knows no bounds. They are quite literally shameless. But what can we do about it? The Conservatives only promise incremental change, a little less tax here, a little less legislation there, but our future has already been signed away to the EU. The daily diet of cock-up and corruption distracts us from the more serious problem; democracy in this country has broken down. The question is, can we fix it or should we replace it?

Dealing with Air Rage

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“Drunken passengers who take advantage of cheap duty-free alcohol while waiting for delayed flights have caused a dramatic rise in ‘air rage’ incidents, it emerged last night.”
“Pilots called on the courts to take stronger action against those putting passengers’ lives at risk.”
Daily Telegraph report on increase in ‘air rage’ incidents.

Reading the above makes me very sad. I suspect the pilots mean us, the travelling public, I suspect they don’t mean the air travel industry that creates the problem in the first place. Those who run the airports and the airlines are breathtakingly indifferent to the plight of those they laughingly refer to as “self-loading cargo.” If they were forced to stand for hours passing through endless frustrating and demeaning queues and checks only to be finally herded onto planes with cramped and uncomfortable seating to spend further hours breathing stale air, I can promise you, they would all suffer from air rage too. Alcohol, cheap or otherwise, is just the match to a mountain of inflammable tinder.

By the time you’ve arrived at the airport, already stressed-out from the journey, and you’ve stood in a painfully slow-moving queue to reach the check-in desk, haggled over the inadequate baggage allowance, put liquids into transparent plastic bags, made your way to the security-check queue, had the indignity of stripping almost to your underclothes, putting your mobile phone, credit cards and small change into a tray, being summoned to walk slowly through the metal detector before being body-searched, and taking your shoes off to put through the radar, you have already spent a significant part of your life being ritually and publicly humiliated. Somewhere in amongst all that you will have had your ticket and your passport checked, after queuing separately on each occasion of course. Then you find yourself in limbo-land, a shoppers’ paradise except that the goods on sale are only fractionally less than high street prices. Apart from the booze, that is.

Finally you are summoned to board your flight. Well, what do you know, there’s a queue to have your ticket checked before you can get into the waiting area where you have to sit and wait yet again, and when boarding does start, there’s a mad scramble to form another queue to have your ticket and passport inspected one more time. And after what seems like a lifetime, you find yourself on the plane at long last. Now you have to find somewhere to stow what little hand baggage you’ve been allowed because there never seems to be enough room in the overhead compartments. That’s why those in the know were so anxious to board first. But anyway, you’ve done it, after all your trials and tribulations you’re on board and you’ve stowed your things. Now you can sit back and relax in your comfortable seat. Not a bit of it.

In order to deter all but the most determined and hardy travellers, the airlines have deliberately made their seats as cramped and uncomfortable as they can be. Airplanes are always overcrowded, you see, and if they could get you to sit two to a seat, one on another’s lap, they would. As it is, they leave you to play elbow-boxing with the person in the seat next to you for use of the arm rest; they simply do not care for your comfort. They simply do not care for your health, either, so to save a trivial amount of money they recycle the cabin air until it is putrid and almost dangerous to breath. So there you sit, for hours on end, uncomfortable, exhausted, deeply resentful, and developing an airplane-induced headache. Is it any wonder the cabin crew find some passengers fractious? Is it really the right response for them to confront such passengers with a heavy handed approach that will only get them irate to such an extent they can then rough them up, put handcuffs on them, and have them charged with air rage? Is cheap alcohol really the problem here? I think not.

Travel in happier times. Note the cabin crew using a stick to welcome passengers to their destination

Travel in happier times. Note the cabin crew using a stick to welcome passengers to their destination


Joined-up thinking by Labour and the Conservatives

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Two relatively minor news items today offer an insight into the approach of the two main parties.

Labour have announced they want to give every woman a £120 cash bonus for getting pregnant. How will that help deal with the problem of unwanted pregnancies? Now we’re going to pay them to have babies? The fact that the cash is intended to be used to buy fresh fruit is risible and shows complete ignorance of the demands of modern life. £120 will buy a very nice iPod, thank you.

The Conservatives, on the other hand, want to impose car parking charges at out-of-town supermarkets. They claim this will allow councils to subsidise local bus services. But as with the young mothers, once they have their hands on the money who knows what the councils will choose to spend it on. It certainly won’t be on subsidised bus services.

Labour has always wanted to hand out taxpayers’ money, and the Tories always used to want to reduce taxation. Now they are keen to impose a tax on parking at supermarkets, something that will hit almost every voter in the pocket, and something that will not go unnoticed by those voters.

The irony is, these two policies would effectively cancel each other out. With many hospitals already charging for parking, a pregnant woman could easily spend £120 in parking fees in just six months with supermarket parking charges on top. That would leave nothing for the fresh fruit, if that was what she was wanted to spend it on in the first place. Did the two parties collude over this?

Rural house price madness

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The Halifax Bank has reported the average price for a house in the country is now almost £250,000, and that it is £30,000 more than the average price for a town house. Factoring-in the disparity in earnings between those living in the country and those in towns, the disparity is a double-whammy. The worst-affected part of the country is Cornwall where average prices exceed average earnings by a factor of ten to one. There are half as many first-time buyers in the country as in towns and cities. This is really not sustainable, but how and when will the adjustment come? Will it be another round of house price crashes? Is the bubble about to burst?

Part of the problem, I believe, is the buy-to-let market where investors have been able to out-bid first-time buyers and soak up a lot of the available property. The losers in that bidding war then become their unwilling tenants thus ensuring the investment was a sound one. Every first-time buyer who fails to buy a home is a prospective tenant to the one who bought it.

A second part of the problem is the level of city bonuses which drive up prices in London and cause outward migration to neighbouring cities, where the incomers in turn drive up prices. They drive out owners who buy property in the surrounding countryside, driving up prices there. Because more people living in the countryside are people working in the towns and cities, the law of unintended consequences comes into play. Those people are obviously mobile and routinely shop in the same towns or cities where they work, so rural businesses suffer.

Everyone at the bottom end of this heap ends up with fewer job prospects and find they can only afford to live in city slums. Wealth is not trickling-down, it’s being sucked-up.

The WiFi bandit – stealing something of no worth

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Police in London have arrested and released on bail a man they saw sitting on a wall using a laptop. When questioned, he had admitted he was using the householder’s WiFi network to get connected. There was no suggestion he was attempting to hack into any computer systems or steal identities, so what was his offence?

The police view is that dishonestly obtaining electronic communication services is an offense under Section 125 of the U.K. 2003 Communications Act, while unauthorised access to computer material is a summary offense under Section 1 of the 1990 Computer Misuse Act.

Broadband accounts are permanently connected and typically billed in flat-rate monthly amounts unrelated to the amount of traffic used. It doesn’t seem on the face of it he has deprived the broadband account holder of anything of any monetary worth or deprived him of the use of anything that was his to enjoy.

If anything, it is the broadband account holder who has been foolish in leaving his WiFi unsecured. The risks of a passing stranger innocently using it without your permission to access his own email or whatever is trivial compared with the risks of having your computer hacked and your identity or bank and credit card details stolen.

If people realise how wide-open they are to that kind of criminal activity, maybe they will secure their networks and maybe then some good will come of this curious incident.