Archive for the ‘Politics’ Category
Now Is The Time For Recrimination – Before They Get Away!
I am delighted to see that The Times and now, this morning, Andrew Marr, are joining me in calling for bankers to be brought to account. The “Thunderer” even said that “heads must roll”. Roll they must, many of them, until the baskets are full and the streets of the City are running with blood. The executions should take place in public so that the greedy thieves and scoundrels who have pillaged our economy can be subject to public humiliation and villification as they meet their doom.
I will carry the metaphor no further but the dread and fear that should now be ruining the weekends of the chief executives and chairmen of the banks should be little different from that of the French aristocrats awaiting the guillotine.
We must insist that those individuals who have taken multi million pound bonuses from banks, funds and all forms of financial institutions that are now insolvent must be able to justify the payments in the same way that a director of a small business that had gone bust might have to explain his drawings to a liquidator. In many instances money will have to be recovered.
Whether guilty of personal wrongdoing or not, the chairmen, chief executives and non-executive directors who have presided over this catastrophe must take responsibility and go! The same sanction must fall on the heads of the regulators.
Lord Adair Turner, Chairman, and Jon Pain, Managing Director Retail Markets, who both accepted poisoned chalices at the FSA only last month may have some excuse but the rest of the board should be summarily dismissed, not even allowed to resign.
Gordon Brown and Alistair Darling have been extraordinarily unequivocal in many of their statements this week. We want to know much, much more detail about the “mechanisms” that will put in place to restrain the banks in future. If the taxpayer has saved your business then in future you will not be gambling on ludicrously complex financial products that only you understand and for which you set the rules. We prefer that you lend £100,000 to a small business rather than £10 million to a virtual roulette wheel.
“There a million stories in the Naked City”. Now is the time for “le dénouement”.
…And He Can Walk On Water
Or so Peter Mandelson would have us believe! Congratulations to him. If he can do it so can I. I can reprise him too. My first ever published article in the national press (The Independent) toyed with my confrontation with the man himself at the junction of Ledbury Road and Westbourne Grove. 
It must have been about 1994. I think around the time of his mortgage scandal. I was gently cycling southwards and as I crossed over this dishevelled, unshaven and grumpy looking character loped along the Westbourne Grove pavement and wanted to cross. The look he gave me when I didn’t give way was enough to freeze the blood of any parliamentary minion and only then did I realise who he was
My abiding memory is of his crumpled shorts – so crumpled. As if they’d been screwed up tight in his fist before beng worn.
And at the instant I think to myself “hasn’t he aged?”, I know the same must be true of me. He has done so with dignity and now looks more the statesman than the aggressive spin doctor.
All hail Peter! You’re back. And in fine fettle!
Olympic Glory
If you haven’t been moved by our outstanding success in Beijing then you have a heart of stone. The commitment, dedication, pride and intensity demonstrated by our sportsmen and women is an example to us all – and that, of course, is the purpose of sport.
The most incisive fact behind all this is that in 1996 in Atlanta, Team GB won just one gold medal. In 1997 lottery funding started. Now, 11 years on, that investment has started to pay off and it seems self evident doesn’t it? Our superstars who are now leading the world, were then just beginning their interest in sport. We have provided proper funding and they are repaying us in gold.
If international sport can replace war and if sporting success can inspire individual success in business, in education, in science and in society then we have a model that deserves even greater support. In itself it justifies the lottery whatever concerns one may have about government sponsored gambling. Our sportsmen and women must now be guaranteed proper funding in future whatever source it comes from.
Russia Invades Georgia
So just as they chose to invade Afghanistan on Christmas Day, the Russians have chosen to invade Georgia on the day the China Olympics open.
It is by no means certain why they choose such an occasion. Perhaps it is to draw attention to the event while the world has an international focus. It may actually serve to emphasise the message they are sending by this action. On the other hand, it may be that Moscow hopes our attentions are distracted by the Olympics and it will
be better able to get away with this sort of conduct now than at any other time.
Russia is asserting its might for its strategic interests in the same way as the USA does. There will be many innocent lives lost. There will be massively increased profits for Russian and Western arms manufacturers.
Ultimately Georgia’s destiny must be to be truly independent so Russia’s action can only fail and should be abandoned immediately. On the other hand there is much talk of agitation in the area by the USA, possibly CIA warmongering.
I fear the die is cast – thousands are going to die. Perhaps it will continue until November when Barrack Obama becomes President-elect and insists on peace.
The worry is that we are all playing with high stakes. Last year Georgia openly cooperated with the CIA to arrest a Russian trying to sell bomb-grade uranium…
Karadzic Faces The Music
It was heartwarming to see Karadzic looking frightened and vulnerable before the very dignified Judge Alphons Orie at the war crimes tribunal. We must now grant him undeserved due process before he is sentenced, undoubtedly to life imprisonment.
I am deeply and fundamentally opposed to the death penalty but I will glady make exceptions for subhuman monsters like Karadzic and Mladic as the Iraqis did for Saddam Hussein. It would be good to see Karadzic twitching and jerking at the end of a rope. In fact, why not spare him the drop and let him strangle slowly.
Birds Of Prey And the RSPB
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7527359.stm
I was horrified to see a spokesman from the RSPB on BBC Breakfast this morning make
Kestrel over Nore Barn Wood 8th June 2008
outrageous and disgraceful accusations against the “shooting community”. He laid the responsibility for all attacks on birds of prey entirely on those who shoot.
Of course, the shooting community has done more to protect and conserve the UK environment and wildlife than any other group over hundreds of years. The RSPB, which has become an undignified, over-commercialised hotbed of “loonies” becomes more power hungry and sensationalist every day trying to over extend itself into a general environmental organization. It pontificates about everything from packaging to helping grannies cross the road and, occasionally, birds. Its primary interest is commercial and it promotes this by such nonsensical, attention grabbing nonsense.
It is appalling that the BBC should allow such blatant lies to be broadcast and without offering those accused the opportunity to respond.
It is also time that someone, and I am setting myself up here, took a long and careful look at the RSPB. Its chief oddity, Bill Oddie, was recently involved in a verbal punch up over the rights and wrongs of eating game. No doubt he is more the battery chicken and Tesco sponsored enthusiast.
The Disappearing Canoeist
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/tees/7520803.stm
What utterly absurd sentences for Mr and Mrs Darwin! When there are violent thugs loose on the streets, this is the sort of idiocy that brings the law into disrepute. The judge has made himself look an utter fool and has done nothing at all in the cause of justice. Clearly these two people were dishonest but the greatest harm they perpetrated was on their sons. I have no sympathy for the insurance company at all because, by definition, it is engaged in a process of long term, calculated but legalised fraud. How many years are the directors and regulators of Equitable Life looking at?
Prison is a place for those convicted of violence, not for sad people like the Darwins. How can the judge live with himself? What rationale can there be for this? I hope he has no connection with the insurance industry. He should have no further role in the judicial system.
Radovan, Robert and Omar
If they really have got Karadzic then tyrants and war criminals the world over should be shaking in their boots because we’re coming to get you all. There is no escape. Despite the evil and corruption that still exists in the world, is this not a breath of fresh and sweet air? Perhaps there is hope for mankind? Perhaps this does show that we are making progress.
The Banks, The OFT, Avarice and Evil
At last, some straight talking from the OFT about the way the Banks treat consumers. As if we didn’t know it already but there is no excuse for the way these evil institutions have been allowed to operate and there can be no more compromise or filibuster about the consequences for them. They behave as if they are above the law. They conduct themselves in ways which in any other context would be defined as theft and fraud. Whilst they throw people out of their homes, deny legitimate business the means to operate, they let their cocaine-fuelled gamblers take ludicrous risks on ridiculous schemes and all the time present themselves as the backbone of our financial system.
Christ’s rage in the temple is the precise analogy. It is time that we saw some of these silver haired, grey suited monsters in jail. Their depth of corruption and manipulation and creation of misery has no comparison. Right now the financial squeeze we are all suffering is entirely down to the incompetence of the banks in making lending decisions based only on the greed of individuals conspiring to create multi-million pound bonuses for themselves. They deny honest, hard-working people the means to progress or recover but there is no consequence for themselves when things go wrong.
Let us pray that the OFT follows through on this properly and brings to heel these out of control, rabid dogs.
