CentreRight

Russians to Harrison Ford: "do not come here. You will be beaten."

Over at The Times, Tony Halpin has a story about Russian reaction to the latest Indiana Jones film.  I love the Indiana Jones films (though I haven't seen the new one yet: any good?).  This positive view is not universally shared in Russia.  Particularly amongst members of the Communist Party, that blameless organisation unjustly singled out for criticism by these beastly film-makers.  If I say, in sum, that they didn't like it, you will have gathered the gist of it but you won't have garnered quite the depth of venom on display. 

In an open letter to him, the Communist Party said:

"You have no future in Russia any more. Speaking plainly, it is better for you not to come here. You will be beaten and despised."

Did the Communists learn nothing from Rocky Balboa's triumphant visit in Rocky IV?  Such threats are doomed to fail.  Moreover, um, isn't this a political party making threats of violence against someone they accuse of having unjustly portrayed them as agents of violence..?

It really is a delight to see the old loonies come out of the woodwork.  Try this, also from Russia's no-longer-governing-but-thinks-it-should gang:

“Harrison Ford and Cate Blanchett are second-rate actors serving as the running dogs of the CIA."

You gets a lot for yer money, don'cha?  Performance critique and accusations of illicit intelligence community connections in one swiping sentence!  Running dogs... ah, I bet you're experiencing just a little Cold War nostalgia hearing that.

We still await the views of the German Nazi Party on Ford and Spielberg's vicious attack on their forebears in a previous Indy outing.

The Queen's Picture

When I saw that Boris had found no pictures of Her Majesty displayed at City Hall over on Conservative Home's ToryDiary, I was reminded of the situation when the Conservatives took power in Canada in 2006. When we arrived in the Prime Minister's Office there was not one single picture of the Queen anywhere. Not one.

When we asked to get a few for prominent display we were met with incredulous looks and weeks of stonewalling from civil servants. It tooks dozens of requests for a few pictures of her Majesty to be installed in our offices, frankly we had an easier time passing our first budget. The left has a deep seated antipathy to our Head of State and we have a duty to emphasise the royal family as a vital, modern and relevant part of our government.

Peak oil, anybody?

Record petrol prices have no doubt contributed to Labour's Crewe-miliation.

It does, of course, suit the Government to blame its unpopularity entirely on economic factors beyond its control.But the weakness of that excuse (apart from it being only partially true) is that even when factors are beyond its control, the job of a competent administration to anticipate and prepare. That's why I was shouting at the radio earlier this week when I heard Malcolm Wicks, the energy minister, claim that no one had predicted the extraordinary spike in oil prices we've seen in recent days.

This is entirely untrue. A series of ever-more extreme price spikes is exactly what those who subscribe to the Peak Oil hypothesis have been predicting. The Peak Oil 'community' is a broad church encompassing everything from informed analysis to manic apocalypticism, but its basic proposition, that conventional oil production will soon peak (or has already) despite a sustained rise in demand, needs to be taken seriously.

Unfortunately, this is not a serious government.

'The week that taxes took centre stage'

See the TaxPayers' Alliance's blog for more.

Thank you, Jenny Scott

A sad moment for lovers of the Daily Politics. The talented and beautiful Jenny Scott is leaving the show to work for the Bank of England.

I've been a guest on the show a couple of times and enjoyed myself hugely. Jenny was a classically tough but fair interviewer; she tried to set guests at ease, especially inexperienced ones like ppcs; and I pay her the greatest compliment when I say I have no clue what her personal politics are.

In an age where some at the Beeb think we need dumbed-down political coverage, a la Jeremy Vine's Clegg shootout, Ms. Scott was a measured presence and a welcome relief.

Good luck at the Bank, Jenny. You will be missed.

A clear message

The Crewe and Nantwich by-election describes the perfect definition of mixed emotions from the late Gwyneth Dunwoody's point of view. She would clearly be upset for her daughter that this super safe seat was not inherited by Tamsin, but there would be a wry smile at the kicking that was inflicted on Gordon Brown and his Government. Gwyneth would have liked that.

As someone who was on the receiving end of a bloody nose in 1991 at the Ribble Valley by-election, I have a scintilla of sympathy for Ms. Dunwoody. It's not nice waking up the next morning after having lost a safe seat. You are exhausted but Party officials expect you to smile at the cameras and try to pick up some crumbs from the defeat.

There are no crumbs in Crewe and Nantwich. It was an awful campaign based on spite, envy and fabrication. Edward Timpson is no "Tory Toff". He is a well educated, family man who has lived in the area for years. He was the true local candidate. He fought on the issues people spoke about in the area, and not on bile wretched up from the rotten guts of a decaying party defaulting to class war politics.

Ave, Boris

24 hours is a long time in politics. A day after challenging the wisdom of some of the mayoral appointments (or to be precise, the salaries involved), I confess that Boris has now pulled a blinder.

He’s recruited a top businessman, Tim Parker, for a peppercorn salary of £1.  His team now features a key figure with real world management experience, at the cost to the taxpayer of a loaf of bread. Now that’s value for money.

Meanwhile of course, bad real world news for Prime Minister Gordon. If I were a betting man, I’d put money on a coup by Straw, and a Milburn premiership – with key cabinet places for the likes of Frank Field, Gisela Stuart and Bob Marshall-Andrews, followed by a General Election before the year’s out. But I’m far from convinced the New Labour goons so prevalent in the at-risk seats have either the nerve or the vision for it.

Good literature + clear message = big victory

The level of the swing in Crewe & Nantwich was much larger than expected.  Why was it that the Conservative team got a bandwagon rolling in a way more usually associated with the Lib Dems?

What struck me was that this is the first time we have used really clear easy to read literature and put across a really simple message.  It's worth looking at http://www.geocities.com/by_elections/ to get an idea of what we used to do and what we do now.  After the mess in the Bromley by election, real improvements started to be made in Ealing - but it wasn't quite there as can be seen looking at all the literature. In Crewe everything was spot on and it was the perfect campaign.  Eric Pickles and the whole Conservative team co-ordinating the by election campaign deserve the strongest congratulations for their brilliant achievement.

An Unsuitable Machine

Peter Riddell of the Times had an interesting article recently, discussing explicitly that of which we were all probably subconsciously aware: there are far fewer by-elections now than was the case a couple of decades ago. He’s right. I’m sure many of us grew up as avid viewers of the Vincent Hanna by-election circus that seemed to swing into action at least twice a year. (Do you remember the Blackadder by-election special? Bliss.) In the most part, the reason for the decline of the by-election is a thing to be celebrated: modern medicine means that fewer members die in the course of a parliament.

The death of Gwyneth Dunwoody – a woman whose name was synonymous with “doughty”, "redoubtable" – indicative of “integrity” as well as “grit” – was a loss that was felt across the political divide. Even those of us who knew of her only by repute felt the loss of an independent-minded member of the legislature. The shock felt by her loss, however, transmuted swiftly to anger, when the Labour Party moved the writ to elect her successor before her body was laid to rest.

Should we re-introduce the death penalty - at least for terrorists?

An Iraqi court has sentenced Ahmed Ali Ahmed, a leading member of al-Qaeda in Iraq, to death for the murder of Archbishop Paulos Faraj Rahho, who was abducted on 27th February.

   Archbishop Rahho

Responding to the sentence, the Anglican vicar of Baghdad, Canon Andrew White, one of the Church of England's leading experts on the Middle East stated that the death penalty was 'justified'.

The case for the UK re-introducing the death penalty, at least for terrorism, if not for all murders, is strong:

• Terrorist prisoners become 'living martyrs' - and in the eyes of other terrorists, provide the justification for further terrorist acts and kidnappings aimed at securing their release, as Israel has discovered to its cost.

More progress in Iraq

Coffee House's James Forsyth points out another New York Times article, noting more progress in Iraq - this time in Sadr City.  Read it here.  The British establishment's indifference to the improving situation across Iraq is a terrible dereliction of duty.  We helped to end the Saddam regime (rightly imo) and have a duty to help Iraq transition to some sort of peace and prosperity.

6pm: Just noticed this, Al Qaeda in Iraq Is at Its Weakest

Labour's "death march" in the polls

Over at The Times Daniel Finklestein has an amazing graph courtesy of Populous - it tracks the Labour government's fortunes in the polls as compared to those of the Conservative government pre-1997.  They're very, very similar indeed.  Check it out.

Declaring war on Alcopops

Family doctors were furious with both the Government (Dawn Primarolo) and the BBC PM programme (Eddie Mair) suggesting that the main cause of the rising alcohol problems in UK is the failure of GPs to recognise such problems. Too silly for words. Alcohol problems are easy to recognise. And we are not just talking about the clichéd alcoholic, lying semi-comatose in the alleyway clutching a bottle of strong cider. We are talking of the housewife who drinks two bottles of supermarket plonk every night, the lawyer, the accountant and, yes, the politician even who starts the evening with two stiff gin and tonics (8 units), demolishes a bottle of claret over dinner (12 units) and finishes the evening with a couple of whiskey night-caps (8 units). That’s 28 units a day, and about 200 units a week. No one can drink that much and still stand up, you may say. They can. They do. And, during the working day, no one notices. Until one day, they turn yellow.

Labour’s attempt to blame the medical profession is absurd. We need to change the drinking culture. We need to start with children. It can be done. Drinking is “cool”, and tough and macho. Smoking used to be like that but, slowly and surely, there has been a change. It can be done with alcohol too.

Where would I start if I were a politician? I would declare war on Alcopops.

At the risk of raining on the mayoral parade...

A little gentle and constructive criticism early on goes a long way.

What should we make of the salaries announced for the mayoral team?

Full credit (literally) to Kit Malthouse, Kate Hoey and possibly Sir Simon Milton, who are carrying out public-spirited work while not claiming for a second job. But it is a heck of a lot of money – public money – that is flowing to some of the rest of the team.

How are people in positions of authority credibly to cut waste and spending unless setting an example themselves? Are such mega salaries justified, especially on the cusp of a recession?

(And before anyone asks, I stood myself during the mayorals on a pledge of massively cutting my own pay packet; no jealous pots and black kettle naming here.)

So, a starter for ten; is a six figure sum really appropriate for City Hall’s new bigwigs? Or is it inevitable that the Mayor should continue with the corporate level of P60s found in Ken’s shredder?

UN investigates USA for "Racism and Xenophobia"

While hundreds of thousands are dying due to the callous indifference of the military junta in Burma and millions are fleeing oppression and hunger in Robert Mugabe’s brutal Zimbabwe, the UN’s farcical Human Rights Council (HRC) is focusing its attention on the United States. This week sees the arrival on US soil of Doudou Diene, the UN Special Rapporteur charged with investigating “racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance” in America.

I've written a piece on the issue for National Review Online.

It is hard to take the UN seriously when its peacekeepers are actively engaged in raping refugees in the Congo and even arming rebel groups, or when it turns a blind eye to the man-made starvation of millions in southern Africa. In the arena of human rights, the United Nations has become an emperor with no clothes, a morally bankrupt institution that wallows in its double standards and appeasement of evil. Doudou Diene’s investigation of the United States should be seen for what it is: a desperate piece of political theater that underscores the UN’s growing irrelevance.

The toughest job in fundraising

On the brink of imminent financial meltdown, Labour cannot expect to be overwhelmed with interest in the three 'high value' fundraiser positions they are currently advertising. Also still available is the position of General Secretary, 'one of the most challenging and exciting executive positions.'

PCSOs - what do you think?

At the Southwark Crown Court last night I took part in a mock trial exercise for trainee policemen (you wouldn't want an officer to be giving evidence for the first time in a real case, any more than you want a surgeon's first incision to be on a real patient).  One of the officers with whom I spoke told me that 80% of her cohort of trainees were once PCSOs, and it was through their involvement in that role that they were recruited to the Force.

Not a bad bit of anecdotal support for PCSOs, is it?

On time limits for abortion

I believe that all human beings are people; perhaps it is not necessary to be a functioning human animal to be a person (perhaps there are angels and aliens that are people), but it is certainly in my view sufficient.  Because of this, I do not believe that we need to have any abortion laws.  Standard murder and other homicide laws are quite sufficient - they indicate to us when it is and is not acceptable to kill people.  Sometimes it is legally acceptable (e.g. as in the case of Jodie and Mary, in which it was acceptable to kill Mary so that Jodie might live).  At other times we recognize that functioning life has ended, as when we switch off the life-support machine of someone brain-dead.  Such principles would tell us that some abortions should be legal (e.g. those involving the termination of a pregnancy involving a foetus without a brain, or a foetus that significantly threatened the life of the mother), and others not.

Boris Johnson probably couldn't have won if...

...he had pledged to match Ken Livingstone's spending for 3 years or more. That's why in the nascent dispute between Daleonomics and Finkonomics, I'm with Iain. Boris' victory does show how receptive the voting public can be to politicians making government share the proceeds of economic pain in a cyclical slowdown. Other than a small and rapidly diminishing pool of Brownites, no one really buys into the argument that higher taxes beget better public services anymore. Seriously, how many people on the doorstep in Crewe are saying please put up taxes so we can have better public services?

And then there's that other canard - favoured by some Tories who should know better and a handful of unreconstructed Social Democrats who talk to the wrong people - that you can't reform public sector without spending more money on it first.

The record of both of those are; been there, done that, failed.

So all credit to Boris for aiming to cut expenditure from Day 1, especially those 40 daily copies of the Morning Star !

Government + database = blunder

Over at The Times: the Government is planning a database of everyone's phone numbers and e-mails.

Because they're just so good at keeping information confidential.

Labour's dirty politics

This story from the current East London Advertiser really ought to be more widely read.  An example of politics at its most degrading.

Former Lib Dem council leader Eric Flounders comes out with the apposite quote:

"They [Labour] got rid of a perfectly good policy at the time because it was politically convenient to shout 'racism'.

"If it was a bad policy then, why's it good now?"

A Tory feminist writes...

A good day for women in political life. First, some sense from the far left. Yes, you read that right. Cllr. Salma Yaqoob, (Respect) from Birmingham has spoken out about Labour's outrageous willingness to spit on ethnic minority women in pursuit of their electoral goals. Labour's lack of action on forced marriage is something I've blogged about before, but as a party they are always willing to overlook the rights of women if it serves other goals they consider "progressive". One example was their quango looking to reduce sentences on men for domestic violence and rape if the abuser merely expresses contrition. Another, of course, is postal voting. Labour knows full well that "community elders" take the votes of women under duress. Cllr. Yaqoob says in the Birmingham Post that ""A particular issue I want to raise is postal voting on demand. I want to call for it to be scrapped. Thousands of Asian women have been denied secret ballots and thousands of ballots have been stolen."

The Conservatives should reform this so that British women are not bullied out of their votes.

Secondly, may I thank Lord Kalms and Chris Gent? They are proposing anew that women be allowed to be full members of the Carlton Club. I hope to be a Conservative MP, and it is sheer nonsense that the major club allied to a progressive party like ours should bar women from full membership. Such is not the Conservative way.

I have defended the party's new direction against Lord Kalms before; and hope he is now persuaded of the true Conservatism of our leadership. But be that as it may, I am most grateful to him and to all other men in the Carlton ready to fight to put this anachronism in history, where it belongs. Thanks to David Cameron and Associations up and down the country, there will be a large number of new Conservative women MPs. The Carlton Club's raison d'etre is Conservatism, not masculinity. I trust it will take this new chance to put the situation right.

The collapse of the UK's inflation target

Gordon Brown's much-lauded economic reforms had, on my count, seven key elements:

1. Operational independence of the Bank of England
2. A modification of the previous inflation target to include a specific value as well as a band
3. The use of various "fiscal rules" to guide fiscal policy
4. The concentration of all financial regulation into one super-regulator, the Financial Services Authority (FSA)
5. A Tripartite framework for promoting financial stability including the Bank of England, the FSA, and the Treasury
6. A "taper relief" system for capital gains tax whereby investments kept in a business for a longer period were subject to less tax that those extracted quickly, as soon as capital gains were made
7. The abolition of the previous "surplus Advance Corporation Tax" regime, a reform intended to encourage longer-term investment and discourage over-payment of dividends

Of these:

• Reform (3) has been long discredited, particularly by the Treasury's continuous changing of the definition of the economic cycle and the fact that in 2005 we had the ridiculous spectacle of the UK's macroeconomic credibility depending on the accounting definition of roads maintenance
• Reform (4) was never considered particularly useful, merely convenient (or even just "tidy"), and is totally discredited in one particular: the removal from the Bank of England of prudential supervision of banks, a reform seen to have been an important (bad) contributor to the Northern Rock debacle
• Reform (5) was exposed as totally useless and unworkable by the Northern Rock debacle
• Reform (6) was clearly not regarded as valuable by the government itself, since it decided (without consultation and over a weekend) to reverse it in the 2007 pre-Budget Report as a way of funding their inheritance tax gimmick.
• Reform (7) has long-since been discredited as little more than a £5bn per year raid on the UK's pension funds, and an important contributor to the collapse of the UK's previously excellent pensions savings reserve

So, that just leaves Reforms (1) and (2).  I never thought that (1) was a reform that we should endorse for ourselves or consider a great achievement.  I shall explain why in a partner posting later this week.  The only one of these seven key reforms that I considered unambiguously good and worthy of our endorsing was (2).  And the government's behaviour of the past year has ruined that.  Last week's inflation report represents the collapse of the UK's inflation target.  I shall explain.

LBJ, Kissinger, Nixon, Gordon Brown, Cameron

Perhaps surprisingly, Kissinger wrote rather touchingly in his book White House Years about LBJ as the Democrat's time in the White House came to a close.  Kissinger was soon to be Nixon's National Security Advisor and was generously allowed access to White House information ahead of time by LBJ and Walt Rostow, so as to be ready to take up office when the time came.  He met with LBJ in the Oval Office and described the frustration palpably present in the very bones of this man who had so much to offer but had been confronted with issues and times he simply couldn't master.

Children vs Identity Politics

And so the votes begin on the Human Fertilisation and Embryology bill. Feelings are riding high on many issues - from abortion rights to stem-cell research - as well as the issue that most exercises my feelings - the intention to remove the need for a father for children conceived via IVF.

As usual in modern Britain, the discussion has polarised into a debate about a surrogate, with some players using the issue as a trojan horse to advance their team's colours. Guardian writers claim that opposition to this move is about an attack on "gay rights" (rights which are attracted to other rights of the same gender?), and I'm sure you could find a few quotes from the usual suspects on the right which would help them maintain that belief (have you noticed that the more politics deals with the less obviously economic, the more extreme the language used by its practitioners?). Even some Conservatives seek to portray the issue as a simple matter of equality for gay people. I find this staggeringly wrong-headed.