Ed Hall: What happens after the generals take charge of Greece?

Ed Hall is a businessman and Conservative activist in Kensington and Chelsea, who was formerly in the Royal Navy, and occasionally blogs here.

So what happens if the Greek government collapses in its current form? As I write, the Greek Prime Minister is struggling to convince a doubtful populace that the future should be one of falling wages, reduced pensions and massive unemployment. If the current government falls, then, in the current climate, can anyone imagine a smooth process to a new one? 

A Greek General Election with parties that question the value or validity of EU membership at all can’t be that far away, and the possible role of the armed forces in managing an election and taking temporary control of the state is already the subject of much speculation on blogs and the Twittersphere.

If Greece really does begin to collapse and the Armed Forces take control (the last Junta only ended in 1974), then surely the EU has to take steps to expel Greece from the club? Can a country run by an unelected military dictatorship be a member of the European Union? Would they send colonels to the Council of Ministers? Or try a civilian puppet as they did in 1967? Greek membership of the EU would have to be suspended.

So if the risk is stronger than ever that Greece collapses into political and public order chaos, then the risk seems to be that the army feels its time has come. The sacking of the whole leadership of the Greek Armed Forces this week would suggest this is a real concern. And so we come to Turkey, which still aspires to EU membership (but is probably confident that now isn’t exactly the time), as they glance once again towards Cyprus. And the Greeks, maybe controlled once again by their military, glance back. 

Ed Hall: The Lost Art of Spinning

Ed Hall is a businessman and Conservative activist in Kensington and Chelsea who occasionally blogs here.

SEX OFFENDERS WHO PLEAD 'NOT GUILTY' TO HAVE THEIR SENTENCES DOUBLED. In a shock announcement that was lauded by victim support groups across Britain, the Justice Minister announced yesterday that people convicted of sexual crimes who delay court cases and thereby force their victims to go through humiliating and distressing cross-examination will have their prison sentences doubled.

How strange, but the sentencing policy proposed by Ken Clarke sounds like a proper Conservative law and order proposal when you put it like that. What is wrong with the advisors and so-called 'spin doctors' in the Coalition?  Nobody in power seems prepared to stand up and fight hard for any reform proposal.  Worst of all is the sense that a fear pervades the Coalition Government of taking on the liberal consensus in the media.  "Listening" has replaced "doing".

The NHS reform is another area of vital activity that now seems to lack any real sense of determination or purpose... The message should be clear.

The NHS is going bust. We're gonna fix it.

Ed Hall: Raising the income tax threshold is an assault on democracy

Ed Hall is a businessman and Conservative activist in Kensington and Chelsea who occasionally blogs here.

You can’t send a gift horse back to the pet shop.  And if you paid nothing for your government or your public services what right do you have to complain?  I don’t believe that the Lib Dem inspired policy of raising the threshold for paying income tax to £10,000 is a sound one, and believe that it will create a painful social division in Britain between those who pay for services, and those who use them.

The logic that everyone contributes to the cost of running Britain, of defending the country, of educating our children and supporting those who cannot support themselves has underpinned taxation and the welfare state for decades.  That principle is under threat as more and more working people are excluded from paying income taxes altogether.  In order to have a mature society, one in which we all become ‘stakeholders’, we need all of society to be engaged both as user of public services, and as their funder.

It’s the economy, stupid.  It’s only when the impact of the quality of local government has an impact on your Council Tax bill that most people start to complain – and then councillors lose their seats.  The same must be true of central government.  If the choice of political party has no real or immediate financial impact on many voters, then they will become even less engaged with the political process. 

Ed Hall: First Past The Post is a simple, comprehensible and - most importantly - fair electoral system

Ed Hall is a businessman and Conservative activist in Kensington and Chelsea who occasionally blogs here.

'It's not fair. I want to watch Bob the Builder again and you won't let me.  I hate you.’

Fairness is one of those qualities in life that we all seek, yet one that changes radically in its meaning as we get older.  'It's not fair,' often seems to be the first whole sentence that you hear from an angry toddler, and to a three year-old much is clearly unfair about life.  The emotion that we feel when we believe we have been treated unfairly is already fully-formed by that age.  It induces anger and rage and 'pit of the stomach' indignation.

Ordinary human beings feel a need (a right perhaps?) for the world to treat them fairly, and by our teenage years the feelings start to hone themselves: usually with school and long-suffering parents as the whetstone on which the sense of fair play sharpens itself.

For a fifteen year-old the words, 'It's not fair!' may mean that another parent, with a similarly aged child, is allowing them to go to the dance, and so quod erat demonstrandum, your actions by saying they can't go are prima facie unfair (I rather like the idea of today's teenagers arguing in Latin).  Fairness, for teenagers, becomes an exercise in moral and ethical comparatives.  If it's fair for Cheryl to get extra help in her grades because she's dyslexic, then why can't I have more points because I'm depressed and my parents hate me? 

It's an important period and it shapes the way we view the world: most well-adjusted grown-ups, with or without the benefit of a religious framework, share a similar sense of what is and is not fair.  And that's why I am vehemently opposed to the proposals to change Britain's voting system to the AV system favoured by the Liberal Democrats.  The system the advocates of AV propose is, in teenage terms, simply not fair.