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Current Thoughts
February 8th 2010  Gordon Brown has yet again come up with an plan which is too prescriptive and shuts out alternatives. I refer to his plan to hold a referendum on changing the UK's electoral system to the alternative vote principle.
Why so precise? Why so exclusive? Why come up with just one alternative, which smacks of 'I've thought about this and this is the correct way forward. This and only this.' No, Mr Brown, there are other alternatives and the way forward would have been to offer a referendum asking voters if they would like to
change the system. Is it that this would have been overwhelmingly voted for and thus made it difficult for any future government to stall on reform, whereas the offer of just one system may only command lukewarm support, thus enabling a future government to delay things yet again? Once more, he is found to be trying
to be too clever by half.
February 4th 2010 I notice that worries are being expressed about future electricity supplies for the UK. Apparently "the market", that hallowed omnipotent force that sorts out all human problems may not work adequately in this case. That maybe the state needs to intervene to provide some capacity.
Well, well, maybe the penny is beginning to drop. Maybe UK politicians are finally beginning to see that government has a responsibility towards its citizens in terms of basic services. A direct responsibility. That private capital is geared to one aim: generating more private capital. That private energy companies, without state regulation, would choose to generate 1KW at several £m rather than millions of KWs
at pence per KW, if the former were more profitable. That competition is only really effective in conditions of what economists call perfect competition: sufficiently large numbers of suppliers and customers that no one supplier or customer can influence the supply and price. Well, apart from being a necessity, power has large numbers of customers but few suppliers, so "the market" cannot be expected to be an effective
mechanism. Never could.Meanwhile the Conservative Party hopes to win votes by promising a greater role for private capital in the future in the economy as a whole. This is the equivalent to saying: "Trust the financial world to provide the right funding, at the right time, to the right people." As we all know, but maybe the Conservatives have not grasped it yet, the financial world is only interested in providing funds in order to maximise its own profits. Benefits for society are incidental/accidental. Until private capital is forced to take the public good into account Western society will remain sick, trapped in an ever tightening spiral of inequality, of ordinary people scrambling to keep up, at ever increasing levels of stress and illness.
Last Month
January 30th 2010 Much has been written about Tony Blair's performance - and don't forget he is first and foremost an actor - yesterday. The things that stand out for me are: the continued conflation of 9/11 and Iraq - Saddam Hussein did not harbour terrorists and ran a secular state; the wilful refusal to admit to the aim of regime change whilst continually using the term
"remove Saddam" as an aim - the two phrases are interchangeable; the refusal to express any sympathy for the relatives of those killed, on both sides, in Iraq and the denial that the aftermath was not a humanitarian catastrophe - how many hundreds of thousands of deaths would it take to get him to admit to the disaster which followed the invasion.Tony Blair is a consummate actor, he believes in his own created world. He is a small and less than admirable human being.
January 25th 2010 I am not sure because the terminology may be different, but if Barack Obama means by his proposal to divide the banking industry that banks which only hold and lend money to individuals and organisations should be completely separate from those organisation which gamble their own ond others' money by ever more complex machinations divorced from the real world, then
I fully support this, a proposal which is way overdue. "Traditional" banks whose ability to honour their commitments to lend and repay should be absolute - underwritten ultimately by government in exceptional circumstances - should be a separate sector. Regulation of assets to liabilities ratios etc is required. If individuals and organisations wish to speculate/gamble with their own or others' funds, then that is their risk and no-one should be required to bail them out if their gambles fail.
This is so obvious and it is a measure of how far big business, especially big financial business, has gained overweening power that this situation has developed at all.Clearly universal legislation on this is preferable, but it would be surprising if other major countries did not follow the US lead (if the measure succeeds). It is in every country's interests not to be vulnerable to a small group of people intent on adding to their individual wealth oblivious to the effects on other people and indeed countries.
January 21st 2010 The latest pronouncement from Binyamin Netanyahu provides further proof of Israel's determination not to advance towards a peaceful solution and lie about the reasons for the statement. "In the case of the future settlement with the Palestinians, this will require an Israeli presence on the eastern side of the prospective Palestinian state."
he said, citing security against rocket attacks etc as the reason. Well, of course, like the separation wall, it has nothing to do with security. It is to do with control - completely surrounding a Palestinian state and preventing free access to water - the river Jordan, just as the wall is also to do with control of the water supply. It also contradicts what he has said many times about negotiations without pre-conditions: here is yet another pre-condition.Together with all the other pronouncements by him on what would be acceptable conditions for an 'independent' Palestinian state: no armed forces, no airport, no seaport, we can be sure that while he is power there will be no peace unless the Palestinians agree to become a vassal province of Israel. He is playing a long, cynical, inhumane game: keep talking peace, keep dropping in another pre-condition when it appears that some progress might be made. Have you noticed the press reports lately talking up the possibility of progress? The hope is that eventually the Palestinians will no longer be able to contain their violent minority and then they can be blamed yet again. It is truly amazing how patient the Palestinians have been and are being. It must be very frustrating for the Israeli administration. It is also prejudicial to their aims: the longer the Palestinians stay patient, the stronger the internal dissidents in Israel become. Have you also noticed the reports of increased harrassment and arrests of Israeli activists?
January 17th 2010 The UK government is apparently going to amend to law on universal juisdiction next week so that accusations about anyone visiting Britain against whom there is a prima facie case of crimes against humanity must be vetted by the Attorney General first.
This of course follows the attempt to serve arrest warrants on leading Israelis visiting Britain. Let's forget for the moment this prime reason - not to upset Israel - for the move. It is a retrogade step purely and simply because it takes the responsibility for deciding whether or not to issue an arrest warrant - which is by no means automatic -
from the politically independent judiciary and places it in the hands of a political appointee. It may be that the decision ought to higher up in the judicial hierarchy than a magistrate, but we only have to look at the contortions around the justification for the attack on Iraq and the BAe affair to know that British Attorney Generals are vulnerable to political pressure.
So we can expect selective use of the principle - which Britain was influential in creating - political friends can visit, whatever accusations are held against them, whereas poltical enemies are likely to find themselves the subject of arrest warrants. Even if the Attorney General were absolutely fair, there is no way of proving it. Only the independent judiciary can provide the assurance
that the law is being applied fairly.
January 9th 2010 I have written about the UK's coup in taking over direct one-man rule over the Turks and Caicos islands. (A very British coup) There are accusations that the takeover is damaging the local economy and that civil servants' pay is threatened or paid late.
Well, the UK certainly isn't spending much UK taxpayers' money on "cleaning up" the alleged corruption on the islands. "Question Asked by Lord Jones of Cheltenham To ask Her Majesty's Government what is the anticipated additional cost of imposing direct rule on the Turks and Caicos Islands. [HL6014] 10 Nov 2009 : Column WA154 The Minister of State, Foreign and Commonwealth Office (Baroness Kinnock of Holyhead): The majority of the costs of implementing the recommendations of the Turks and Caicos Islands Commission of Inquiry, including the suspension of ministerial government and the House of Assembly, will fall to the Turks and Caicos Islands Government. The Government are funding the provision of additional staff for the Governor's Office, and additional advisers for the Turks and Caicos Islands Government. It is not yet possible to specify the full costs of the provision of such advisers prior to the restoration of an elected Government on or before July 2011." (http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/ld200809/ldhansrd/text/91110w0006.htm) As usual, British colonies bear the costs of British rule.
January 6th 2010 So Israel's Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon regards the British law which enshrines the principle of universal jurisdiction as "intolerable."
I wonder if he would regard as "intolerable" that same law being applied to suspected former Nazis visiting the UK, or suspected Hamas or Hezbullah militants doing the same. I could guarantee that if a Jewish group applied to the British courts for a warrant
to arrest such people, he would also find it "intolerable" if the UK government aided and abetted such people to avoid a warrant being served. It's called double standards, based on the assunption that everything Israel does has to be good and everything that Israel's
opponents do is evil. He also said in the same context that Britain and Israel "share common values and interests." Really? Common values? Did the UK kill anywhere between ten times and a hundred times as many people the Irish republicans killed? Did the UK attack Dublin and occupy the Republic of Ireland?
Did the UK build a wall between the two parts of Ireland? Did the UK blockade the Irish Republic? Clearly the Israeli leadership follow the same precepts as Ariel Sharon who said in 2001: "Israel may have the right to put others on trial, but certainly no one has the right to put the Jewish people and the State of Israel on trial." Common interests? Does the UK share this 'interest': "It is the duty of Israeli leaders to explain to public opinion, clearly and courageously, a certain number of facts that are forgotten with time. The first of these is that there is no Zionism, colonialization, or Jewish State without the eviction of the Arabs and the expropriation of their lands." ? Ariel Sharon again, in 1998. Does the UK share this sentiment expressed in 1989 by the present Prime Minister of israel: "Israel should have exploited the repression of the demonstrations in China, when world attention focused on that country, to carry out mass expulsions among the Arabs of the territories." The current term for that process is ethnic cleansing and ethnic cleansing, carried out in stealthy and opportunistic ways, is what Israel has been doing since 1948. Does the UK share Israel's interest in ethnically cleansing Palestine of all Palestinians? What I find "intolerable" is the insistence of Israel that Israel is always right and that no-one is allowed to voice any criticism of Israel's actions. January 4th 2010 Following the failed terrorist attack on the plane bound for Detroit and the running around like headless chickens response of the Western governments comes the demand for an end to the process of closing Guantanamo Bay.
This is on the basis that the "terrorists" held there, if released, will revert to their previous terrorist activities. Firstly, no-one has been able to prove terrorist activities against those detained - if there had been any real evidence they would have been tried. Secondly, there is the blatant disregarding of the
alternative scenarios: a) that holding men who may be innocent without trial for years may convince some of them that, if released, they will turn to violence in revenge and b) their countrymen are more likely to turn to terrorism when witnessing the injustice meted out to those detained.It is also significant that those caught in the act are described as being "radicalised". This is no accident. It implies that they are in some way not totally guilty or evil - although that won't stop long sentences - because there are others more guilty and evil who dupe these deluded individuals. The reason for this? Simple: we fear more those we cannot identify, those who remain the menacing bogeymen in the shadows. I still believe that history, if we survive long enough for that history to be written, will record that al-Qaeda, to the extent that such an organisation exists, was born of the West's decision to create such an entity. It gives every disaffected non-Western individual an umbrella organisation to be affiliated to and it gives Western politicians the external focus of fear, rather like "Communism". Governments need external enemies to pacify their citizens.
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