Blog

Conspiracy theorists are always on the lookout for some secret cabals who rule the world: it may be the Jews, the Masons, the Judaeo-Masons, Opus Dei, the Mafia, the military-industrial complex, banks – or any combination thereof. The list of exciting possibilities is endless.

Yet history shows that the world (or rather its constituent elements) is hardly ever run by secret or cabalistic groups. Ruling elites usually have no need for secrecy: they proudly operate out in the open.

That doesn’t mean we can identify them easily without taking a close look or comparing one against another. And even then we need a few telltale signs to help us along.

I’d suggest that the surest telltale sign of a ruling elite is its ability to place itself above the law, or at least the rules, generally governing the hoi-polloi world.

One such rule proscribes nepotism in most walks of life. In many Western outfits, both private and public, nepotism – hiring and promoting close relations, or encouraging others to do so – isn’t just discouraged but prohibited.

I remember working at NASA in my younger days, when two rather lowly employees announced their engagement. They were quietly summoned to their manager’s office and given the choice of which one of them should be sacked.

In my subsequent career with various companies on two continents, I had the chance to observe similar situations, with no choice or quarter given: both the man and the woman would be fired if they got married or sometimes even if they had an affair. Most companies I’ve known, especially if publicly owned, specify an anti-nepotism clause in their corporate policy.

(Obviously such clauses don’t extend to the owners and top management: on a reduced scale such mini-elites are also above the rules covering everyone else.)

Now it’s my contention that Britain is more or less run by an elite made up of journalists and politicians: those who manipulate public opinion and those who stand to benefit from it.

The membership in this elite seems to be fluid to the point of being interchangeable: journalists effortlessly become politicians (William Rees-Mogg, Nigel Lawson, Johnson, Gove,) and vice versa (Parris). This is reminiscent of the Soviet nomenklatura, with, say, a deputy minister of fisheries drifting on to become a magazine editor, then an ambassador, then chairman of the football association. 

Contrary to the current preoccupation with the educational backgrounds of our politicians, matriculation at a particular school doesn’t seem to play a dominant role, though it may play some. But notice the ease with which members of our journo-political elite flout the convention against nepotism.

Yesterday’s Mail ran a good knockabout piece about The Red Princes, leftwing politicians brought together not only by ideological but also by family ties: the Kinnocks, the Benns, the Milibands, Harman/Dromey, Hames/Swindon, Balls/Cooper and so forth.

To be fair, the article acknowledged that such gauche (or is it sinister?) practices aren’t the exclusive prerogative of the political Left. The paper cited Douglas Hurd’s son Nick, currently a Tory minister; John Gummer’s son Ben, currently an MP; Lord Rees-Mogg’s son Jacob, ditto. And even Dave Cameron, who boasts MPs in his family tree, got a mention.

The words ‘log’, ‘eye’ and ‘mote’ spring to mind, especially if we focus on Jacob Rees-Mogg, whose father was mainly known as a journalist, not just a former Tory minister. For the other element of the ruling coalition, journalism, is riddled with nepotism as much as the political world.

I shan’t bore you with a long list of siblings, spouses or parents and children appearing regularly in our mainstream media. Suffice it to mention the Dimbleby brothers, the nuptial duos of Muir/Macintyre, Purves/Heiney, Wagner/Gilbert, Vine/Grove and Moran/Paphides, the whole dynasties of the Waughs, Mounts, Johnsons, Lawsons, Rifkinds and so on ad infinitum.

The last four names also support my earlier point about the fluid demarcation between politics and journalism, with the great dynasties of the Mounts, Johnsons, Lawsons and Rifkinds adorning both parts of the ruling elite.

Anticipating, and trying to preempt, such jaundiced comments clearly driven by hunger for sour grapes, Dominic Lawson published a piece in the same issue decrying nepotism in politics but disclaiming any in his own family.

Yes, he acknowledged, his father was a Tory minister when Dominic himself embarked on a career in journalism. But that put Dominic at a disadvantage because his first job was with the BBC, an organisation not known for Tory sympathies.

One can compliment Mr Lawson’s considerable mental agility, while rebuking him for slight disingenuousness.

After all, after his short BBC stint as researcher, he spent most of his journalistic career proper at Tory papers, such as The Spectator, The Sunday Telegraph, The Sunday Times, The Times and The Mail. In that rarified world his father Nigel, himself former Telegraph editor, was no hindrance. And Dominic’s voluptuous sister Nigella had also worked at The Spectator and The Sunday Times before she laid a claim to domestic divinity.

I’m not suggesting that we should – or, more to the point, could – do something about this. Blood thicker than water and all that, you know the clichés as well as I do.

All I’m saying is that such rather tawdry nepotism can act as a guide for someone anxious to identify our wire-pullers. Look at the rules, then look above them – that’s where you’ll find the true elite.

James Carville, Bill Clinton’s strategist, famously put electoral politics in a nutshell: “It’s the economy, stupid”.

In other words, people look into their wallets and vote accordingly. The party that delivers, or credibly promises, better economic prospects wins. Simple, isn’t it?

It is. It’s also demonstrably wrong. And, like most political fallacies, this one is based on a false premise.

In this instance the false premise is what I call ‘totalitarian economism’, an attempt to reduce the entire complexity of life merely to economic considerations. However, life in general, and human behaviour in particular, refuse to be squeezed into the Procrustean bed of economics.

One wonders how Carville would comment on this political conundrum:

Labour was in government for 12 years. During this tenure the party presided over one of the greatest economic disasters in Britain’s history. Moreover, its policies not only dumped the country into short-term economic trouble but also compromised its economic structure in perpetuity.

This confirmed the widespread opinion that Labour can’t be trusted with the economy, and the party’s subsequent four years in opposition reinforced this perception.

The Tories, on the other hand, traditionally enjoy a reputation for economic competence.

Those who understand such matters better than the average voter may argue that this reputation is undeserved, certainly in the last couple of decades. But this is neither here nor there: it’s not switched-on eggheads who decide elections. It’s the average, which is to say clueless, voter.

Nonetheless, standing for office in the midst of a catastrophic recession, and against the party widely perceived to be responsible for it, the Tories failed to win an outright majority. The people clearly didn’t vote with their wallets. So what did they vote with?

Once in office, the Tories, even though hamstrung by being married to a party that champions all the Labour ideas times ten, managed to drag the country out of the Labour recession. Moreover, they delivered an economic growth way in excess of anything currently achieved by other European countries.

Again, the aforementioned eggheads may argue that this is phoney prosperity specifically geared to the 2015 election, after which it’ll collapse. But Mr Average Voter doesn’t analyse such issues at depth – he skims along the surface. And on the surface of it the Tories are living up to their reputation for always being able to disentangle the Labour mess.

In spite of that, one poll after another has been consistently putting Labour ahead by a huge margin, enough to put them into government with a commanding majority. Clearly, the voters involved in such surveys don’t peek into their wallets before expressing their preference.

Then the Tories come up with a hugely popular budget, perceived to sort out many concerns of the electorate, mainly its older – and rapidly expanding – part. Not only was the budget instantly hailed as a tour de force, but Labour was unable to counter it with anything other than vaguely negative noises with no discernible substance to them.

Thus both the Tories and Labour have acted in character, or rather perceived character. People’s wallets, already thicker than under Labour, look like they’ll soon bulge to bursting. They also look as if they’d return to their former consumptive gauntness should Labour get back in.

One would suggest that there goes the next election, signed, sealed and delivered to Conservative Campaign Headquarters. Yet in the immediate aftermath of the budget, when its effects are at their strongest, Labour is still in the lead, albeit by a single percentage point.

Most of Mr Carville’s British colleagues confidently predict that once the post-budget bounce is attenuated, Labour will reclaim their commanding lead and won’t relinquish it until the election. That will mean at least another six years of blows raining on the economy, which may well drop it down for the count.

So do you still think it’s the economy, stupid, Mr Carville? Do you still think people vote with their heads firmly buried in their wallets?

It’s typical of our harebrained, materialistic modernity to insist on physical explanations for what is clearly metaphysical in nature: human behaviour. This isn’t to say that it’s impervious to physical factors – only that it isn’t wholly, or even mainly, determined by them.

Here I like to shift into politics the term hitherto restricted to theology: apophatic. Apophatic theology proceeds not from what God is, but from what God can’t possibly be given his absolute goodness.

Translated into elections, apophatic politics means voting on negative rather than positive assumptions. In simpler words, it’s voting not for but against someone or something. And, if experience teaches us anything at all, our electoral politics is determined by apophatic, in this instance irrational, reasoning.

Voters don’t weigh the pros and cons dispassionately: they go with their hearts. And that organ has been conditioned by at least a century of socialist propaganda to generate hate more easily than love, envy more readily than any constructive emotions.

If British (and other Western) voters have demonstrated anything, it’s their readiness to disregard their own self-interest for the sake of indulging their complex resentments. Their neighbour’s failure means more to them than their own success.

Thus the numbers in Tory ledger sheets matter a lot less than the number of Old Etonians in their cabinet. Their accent on economics matters less than the accents with which Tory politicians speak.

Once again, I’m not suggesting that the Tories can cure our economic ills – I rather tend to side with the economists who point at the structural cracks in our economic masonry that can’t be papered over by cosmetic improvements.

It is, however, a fact that the average voter sees the Tories as being more economically trustworthy than Labour. In this perception, put in such relativistic terms, I’d side with the average voter.

If Carville’s formula were true, Labour would be dead and buried. As it is, we may well enjoy six years of the Milibandits running the country – into the ground.

Apophatic politics rules, okay?     

 

   

In most of the world’s criminal codes handling stolen goods is criminalised on a par with actually stealing them.

But what’s sauce for the goose of individuals doesn’t seem to be sauce for the gander of states, EU states in particular.

Yet as that quivering aspen proves, tainted money taints the recipient and may ultimately lead to his suicide. This would be a useful lesson for EU spivs to learn, except that they show no signs of ever being able to learn any lessons.

The sanctions imposed on a handful of Putin’s henchmen are worse than derisory – they are suicidal, and not just because they encourage further conquests.

What the EU’s craven response proves is that no cause, no principle exists that would make it prepared to suffer even the slightest material discomfort. Europe’s body loves Russia’s gas, and her billions laundered through European banks, more than Europe’s soul hates evil.

This effectively turns Europe into a giant fence, a sort of Fagin to Putin’s Bill Sykes. Surely everybody knows that all Russian billionaire, emphatically including Col. Putin himself, are gangsters? That every penny they own isn’t capital but loot?

Moreover, when it comes to a contest of wits, gangsters will always fly rings around unscrupulous but not yet criminalised bankers and government officials. Witness the ease with which the billionaire Gennady Timchenko got around US sanctions.

Timchenko (codename ‘Gangrene’, which wouldn’t be my first choice of a moniker) is one of the owners of the Swiss-based, Cyprus-registered oil trader Guvnor, through which most of Russian oil flows to the West. It’s an open secret in Russia that Putin himself holds an interest in Guvnor, estimated at 50 to 75 percent (he also owns 4.5 percent of Gasprom, lucky lad).

When the news of the impending action by the US Treasury was leaked, Timchenko instantly ‘sold’ all his shares to his Western partner, and if you think that the sale was real and irreversible, there’s a bridge across the Thames I’d like to sell you.

For the US sanctions’ punch to connect with anything but air, what should have been frozen wasn’t Timchenko’s personal assets but those of his company.

That blow would have rocked Putin; the air punch must have made him laugh, as he watched his stooge cocking a snook at the Yanks. And the EU didn’t even sanction Timchenko personally, lest Putin take offence.

Sweeping sanctions ought to be applied to both the personal and corporate assets of all Russian oligarchs without a single exception, including the shady owner of Chelsea FC.

We must never forget that Abramovich, Mandelson’s best friend Deripaska and every other Russian who made billions overnight didn’t really make them. The Russians are absolutely right when referring to these petty crooks elevated to the rank of ‘businessmen’ as ‘appointed oligarchs’.

Their function is to act as conduits for the ruling elite’s money flowing to the West. The oligarchs have only a leasehold on their capital – the freehold is owned by the KGB colonels who make up the Russian government and by the KGB generals who appointed the colonels in the first place.

The oligarchs are allowed to live high on the hog off the interest, provided they don’t forget which side their bread is buttered. This means not meddling in politics unless it’s on Putin’s side and also coughing up whenever the colonel needs some loose change, billions’ worth, for one of his pet projects.

Being personally obsequious to Putin is also an iron-clad requirement, hence the yacht Abramovich once presented to the colonel as a gift.

Compared to the billion-pound palaces Putin is constructing for himself all over Russia, this is just a small token of respect, or rather rispetto if we use the term first popularised by Italian gangsters. But without such tokens, and his general docility, Abramovich et al wouldn’t be allowed to hang on to their billions, possibly their lives.

Dave Cameron says he doesn’t exclude the possibility of imposing sanctions on Abramovich and presumably other Putin cronies whose money lives in Britain even if they themselves don’t.

I have to see this to believe it but, if such sanctions do materialise, no doubt the City will suffer some pain. Similarly, if the EU were to freeze all dubious Russian assets (which is to say all major Russian assets), Putin will retaliate in some fashion, probably using his gas pipeline as a weapon.

But any pain we may suffer is but a minor itch compared to the massive moral damage caused by the toxic presence of Russian loot in our countries. When the formerly honourable financial institutions of the West are turned into fencing or money-laundering operations for gangsters, the West loses its moral fibre, whatever is left of it.

Bereft of it, the West becomes a purely geographic entity, with no claim to any moral justification for its continued existence as a force for good. If history has taught anything, it’s that civilisations losing their moral spine eventually die out.

 

 

 

 

 

  

FREEDOM IN THE CITY: UNDERSTANDING PUTIN’S RUSSIA

 

As part of The Freedom Association’s Freedom in the City series, Alexander Boot will be discussing his latest book, How The Future Worked: Russia Through the Eyes of a Young Non-Person.

Alexander Boot was born in Russia and educated at Moscow University. He lectured on English literature, wrote art and film criticism, and made a nuisance of himself with the Russian authorities. Pursued by the KGB, he emigrated to the USA in 1973, and then in 1988 to the UK. Following a career in business, alongside his writing, Alexander Boot dedicated himself to writing from 2005 and is the author of books such as How the West Was Lost (2006), God and Man According to Tolstoy (2009), The Crisis Behind Our Crisis (2011), and the co-author of The Nation That Forgot God (2010).

The Freedom in the City event is free to attend and will be taking place at The Counting House, 50 Cornhill, London, EC3V 3PD in the Griffin Room – on Wednesday 26^th March, starting at 12:45pm.

The Freedom Association

Every couple of years my wife and I have to come up for air, which is to go to Venice.

We arrived three days ago, too tired to explore the place for real. An obligatory stroll to Rialto Bridge and Piazza San Marco was all we could manage, which brings me to:

Snippet 1. I espied a famous left-wing talk-show host, obviously revelling in the anonymity denied him in London.

The chap suffered a bad stroke some time ago but is back at work now, having presumably recovered. Well, that presumption would be wrong.

He’s paralysed on the left side of his body, and watching him trying to negotiate  a hunchbacked bridge was painful. Mercifully he was propped up on on his right side by a good-looking but tastelessly dressed girl, knee-high PVC boots and all.

Predictably I made a tasteless joke, along the lines of his paralysis obviously being only partial. Just as predictably my wife responded by pointing out indignantly that the girl could be the celebrity’s daughter or friend.

Not likely, I suggested. I doubt he’d let his daughter go out dressed like that in a country that has elevated bella figura to the status of religion. Nor, for all his progressivism, would he be friends with a silly girl who dresses that way.

What do you know, last night we went out for dinner way off the beaten track, where we like to spend our time in Venice – and there he was, walking into the restaurant leaning on another woman, this one somewhat closer to his own age and therefore relying on peroxide to look younger.

Another tasteless joke from me, another angry rebuke from my wife, but I caught myself feeling sorry for the poor sod. Getting soft in my dotage – 20 years ago I was constitutionally incapable of having such emotions for lefties.

If Tony Benn had died then, my reaction would have been “another one bites the dust”. As it was, I felt sad, as I did now for the chat show man. Should I eat more red meat?

Snippet 2. A fresh graffito on the wall of a dilapidated palazzo: “Brits out of Europe”. And I didn’t even know Nigel Farage was in Venice too. Did he have a paint spray with him or did he buy it locally? Oh the mysteries of life.

Snippet 3. A middle-aged American woman loudly demanding directions for Ferrovia, which in her rendition rhymed with Monrovia. Ferro – iron. Via – way, road. Put them together and you get ‘railway’ or, for Americans, ‘railroad’. What do they teach them out there? Same things as in Britain, I suppose.

Snippet 4. Asked a newsagent for “giornali inglesi”. He showed me a copy of The New York Times and said, “Quasi inglesi.” Wish I knew how to say “Quasi my a***. Not even close, mate,” in Italian.

Snippet 5. Two posters side by side. One says “smoking prohibited”, the other “free boat ride to the casino”.

If I uncharacteristically wanted to ban anything, I’d ban pop concerts that unfailingly resemble a cross between an orgy and a Nuremberg rally.

But of the two juxtaposed options, I’d ban gambling rather than smoking. True, the odd flutter with nothing much riding on it could be good fun. But then the odd cigar after dinner isn’t going to kill you either.

However, if pushed to their compulsive extreme, smoking only corrupts the body, not the soul. On the other hand gambling leaves your body alone but goes straight for the soul. I know which one I’d choose to ban, even though I’m painfully aware that my choice would buck the Zeitgeist.

Snippet 6. And speaking of bella figura, walked through a council estate in Canareggio. Two blocks of flats, separated by a lane about 40 feet wide. In London they’d stay separated, but here their roofs are tied together by an elegant archway in the mock-Romanesque style. Beauty doesn’t have to be married to wealth.

Snippet 7. In spite of our concerted efforts to avoid Piazza San Marco, we found ourselves there again, being jostled by a gaggle of young Japanese determined to conform to the snapshot-taking stereotype.

The Doge’s Palace is gorgeous, but is it really the most beautiful Gothic building in the world, as John Ruskin insisted it was? Matter of taste, I suppose, but did he see the great French cathedrals? Then again, Ruskin maintained that all Gothic portals were vaginally shaped, so there.

Snippet 8. Popped over to Padua for a few hours to see the Giottos at Capella degli Scrovegni, in anticipation of the Veronese exhibition at the National Gallery I so much look forward to avoiding. From the sublime Giotto to the soulless Veronese. If this is progress, I’d like to know what decline looks like.

Snippet 9 and last. Venice is of course a large tourist trap single-mindedly dedicated to fleecing tourists.

Yet it’s amazing how easy it is to get away from the crowds and have the city all to yourself. Just came back after a 2-hour postprandial walk, having seen no one but a few people who talked loudly, in Italian and using their hands to help the verbal communication along.

I could tell you where you can go to get away from the stampeding herds of tourists and really enjoy Venice, but I won’t. I want those places to remain pristine next time we come.

 

Education Secretary Michael Gove, himself a public-school boy, has a problem with the number of Old Etonians in Dave’s cabinet.

Personally, as I suggested the other day, I don’t care about the educational background of our cabinet members, their sex, race or religion. I do have a problem with their competence, or rather lack thereof.

However, I’m not sure how drawing our leaders from idiot-spewing comprehensives would improve the quality of government in Britain. I rather think that would make it even worse, which is saying a lot.

Mr Gove hastily reassured his cabinet colleagues that he had no problem with the individuals involved, and his comments came only from the vantage point of his remit.

Every child, said Mr Gove, must be the author of “their life story”. He thus not only highlighted the problem but also inadvertently illustrated it by following a singular antecedent with a plural possessive pronoun, thereby avoiding the toxic word ‘his’.

In general, Mr Gove’s use of English is astonishingly bad, especially for a professional hack and education guru. Perhaps, when all is said and done, private schooling doesn’t confer the same educational advantages as it did in the past.

The overrepresentation of Old Etonians reflects a situation Mr Gove called ‘ridiculous’. It’s “a function of the fact that… more boys from Eton go to Oxford and Cambridge than boys eligible for free school meals.”

Why does he suppose that is? Is it the inbred nepotism and cronyism of Oxbridge? Or is it the fault of our comprehensives that can’t teach pupils even basic literacy and numeracy? One would rather think it’s the latter.

Contrary to what the dominant egalitarian ideology insists we believe, not everyone can qualify for our best universities, or even the worst ones. Yet everyone can and must be taught the elementary skills required for survival in the commercial world.

Lumping all children together on the basis of a virtual-world ideology is a sure recipe for educational disaster – and a guarantor of more, not less, social stratification in the real world.

When free schools mainly teach pupils how to use condoms but not how to use their brains, parents will strain every fiscal sinew to educate their children privately. Obviously, the richer the parents, the more likely they are to succeed.

Research bears this logic out with irrefutable ease. Countries that have retained grammar schools have for all intents and purposes eliminated the link between the parent’s wealth and the child’s education.

Cross-checking the performance of 15-year-olds against their social background, the study published by the European Sociological Review showed that in Britain 9.4 percent of the variance was caused by the pupil’s social background.

In Germany, which has happily retained grammar schools, the corresponding figure is 1.4 percent. Almost seven times lower.

When schools are used as laboratories for social engineering or else as ideological battlegrounds, they’ll produce results diametrically opposite to the ideologues’ stated  intentions, though probably consonant with their innermost cravings.

The ruling elite’s political survival depends on an illiterate populace. After all, if people were taught to express themselves with good grammar and proper cadences, they wouldn’t want to be governed by the likes of Gove or his friends George and Dave.

Also, once confined to the idiot-spewing comprehensives, how motivated do you suppose English pupils will be to improve their language skills when most of their classmates don’t speak English at home and are encouraged to uphold their ‘culture’ at school? Not very, would be my guess.

The problem isn’t with the sheer numbers of foreigners – witness the superb mastery of English so many Indian pupils used to attain in their own country under the Raj.

Whatever they spoke at home, they were told in no uncertain terms that only English must be spoken at an English-language school – and spoken properly, with no allowances made for the pupil’s native linguistic background.

According to our prevailing PC ideology, this sort of thing would be downright offensive for not being sufficiently multi-culti. Force an Estonian or Indonesian child to speak correct English, and you may leave him with lasting psychological scars.

It’s so much better to leave all pupils, regardless of their nativity, in a state of savagery – and not even the noble kind so beloved of Rousseau.

So what’s Mr Gove going to do about this, other than pander to class resentment already alive and well in Britain?

Oh yes, he’s loudly and hypocritically proud of sending his own children to Greycoat School in central London. It happens to be one of the top 10 state schools in Britain, with a waiting list to rival Eton’s, but Mr Gove leaves this detail out of his rhodomontades.

Is he going to announce that, should the Tories retain power, they’ll phase out comprehensives over the life of the next Parliament? Will they decree that our schools will insist on all pupils adapting to the English civilisation, rather than it adapting to them? Will he reinstate grammar schools?

Yes, and schweinen will fly, as my friend Angela likes to say, always adding that in real life they don’t fly and this is simply a figure of speech. It’ll be a cold day in hell before our spivs realise what a social and cultural catastrophe they’ve perpetrated in Britain. And a positive freeze before they really do something about it.

Any punishment for any crime should ideally serve two purposes: properly punitive (serving justice) and deterrent (preventing the criminal from doing it again).

These days many, including some of our top judges, disagree. They think that the prime purpose of punishment is rehabilitation: improving the criminal’s character.

That’s why they routinely pass derisory sentences, claiming spuriously that “prison has never done anyone any good.”

First, this is factually wrong: throughout history, there have been numerous examples of criminals emerging after a prison term better men than before. Suffering in general is a personality builder – in fact, an essential one.  

Second, rehabilitation isn’t so much a secondary purpose of punishment as tertiary. If it happens, so much the better. If it doesn’t, well, we have prisons mainly not to improve those inside but to protect those outside.

The same logic applies to dealing with international criminals, rogue states committing predatory acts. The circumstances are different, so is the scale, but the purpose remains the same two-fold: punishment and deterrence.

Which of the two has been achieved by the sanctions imposed on Putin’s Russia, or rather on her 21 minor officials? Obviously, lamentably, infuriatingly neither.

Putin is rapidly creating a fascist state, with himself as a Mussolini-type figure, mutatis mutandis. This is clearly linked to his desire to rebuild the Soviet Union to its past glory. After all, this KGB colonel with megalomania regards its dismemberment as “the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the twentieth century”.

In order to achieve this worthy aim, the good colonel needs to incorporate into Russia (or the mythical Union of Independent States, or the equally mythical Eurasian Economic Community) most of the ex-Soviet republics. Of these, in terms of size, natural resources and strategic significance, the most important are Kazakhstan, Belarus – and especially the Ukraine.

Now, since the West has every reason to believe that the past glory of the Soviet Union wasn’t all that glorious, we must do all we can to prevent the Walpurgisnacht the Soviet Union really was. After all, that charming brainchild of Lenin and other evil degenerates murdered 60 million of its own people, enslaved half the world and several times brought it to the brink of nuclear annihilation.  

This is the only context in which Russia’s action in the Crimea can be seen properly. And, as follows from their immoral, craven and suicidal response to Putin’s aggression, this is exactly the way our ‘leaders’ don’t see it.

Unchecked democracy encourages strategic myopia, with few politicians able or willing to see the world in any terms other than their next election. Since in our materialistic times this usually hinges on strictly short-term economic factors, they are incapable of thinking beyond an immediate economic gain or, as the case may be, loss.

Col. Putin has his grubby fingers on the tap controlling the flow of gas in his cherished pipeline. This is seen as Europe’s lifeblood, what with a quarter of her gas and, more to the point, a third of Germany’s coming through Putin’s pipe.

It’s the fear of the tap shutting that guides Western policy towards Russia, not any desire for justice or, crucially, deterrence.

God forbid Putin should turn the tap clockwise. Why, our heating bills would go up, with our leaders’ electoral chances heading in the opposite direction.

The very fact that this, highly predictable, type of thinking is possible re-emphasises the idiocy of depending on rogue states for our strategic resources. Every waking moment of our ‘leaders’ ought to have been dedicated to expanding every possible alternative to Russian, and for that matter Middle Eastern, oil and gas.

The only existing alternative, and no sane individual would regard sun and wind as such, is nuclear, and the most promising future (in America, already present) alternative is hydraulic fracturing.

And what do Germany and France do? Germany under the former communist apparatchik Merkel is shutting down all her nuclear power stations, France,under the socialist apparatchik Hollande, many of hers, and both are fighting ‘fracking’ tooth and nail.

This doesn’t just put a blackmail weapon into Putin’s hands, but cocks it and slips the safety off. Still, any reasonable government of any major nation would refuse to go along with the blackmailer.

Moreover, this is the kind of weapon that can backfire. Yes, as Putin has demonstrated in his previous dealings with recalcitrant neighbours, he’s capable of using the pipe as a gun barrel. If any other than derisory sanctions had been brought on line this time, Europe would indeed suffer some short-term discomfort.

But Russia’s economy is totally dependent on her exports of hydrocarbons – this would hurt her more than it would hurt us. They can’t eat their gas, and they can’t drink their oil.

Yet even minor discomfort isn’t something our ‘leaders’ are prepared to countenance.  And no state unwilling to accept some pain in order to prevent a looming disaster deserves to survive. Make no mistake about it: if Putin gets his way, our survival will become tenuous.

The mistake the West has always made towards the Soviet regime (of which the post-Soviet one is but a continuation by other means) is to believe that its party and KGB chieftains are PLUs, People Like Us.

Granted, there are rough edges here and there, and caution must be exercised – but fundamentally they can respond to the fair give-and-take of politics. We’re nice to them, they’ll be nice to us; we give, they take – then the other way around.

Any serious study of history, ideally augmented by native knowledge of the place, will tell you that this picture has nothing to do with reality. The Russians’ approach to political realities is that of take-take.

They have always treated kindness as a sign of weakness: witness the fact that every Russian tsar who attempted liberal reforms was murdered. And internationally the Russians don’t understand fair trading; the only language they understand is that of brute force.

It’s naïve to believe that slapping 21 officials on the wrist constitutes a show of such force. What it is is encouragement for the KGB colonel to accelerate his rebuilding programme.

Just think: the next on the list may be the Baltic republics, NATO members. If they are attacked and the West does nothing, this will spell the end of any resistance to international evil. And if the West does do something, it may mean war.

Historical parallels are easy to see. For Crimea, 2014, read Munich, 1938. But don’t read it at bedtime.   

 

 

 

        

The Chancellor’s severe medical condition was diagnosed at Saturday’s meeting of the Conservative party’s 1922 Committee.

The symptoms included losing touch with reality, manic delusions and illogical, incoherent ranting.

Mr Osborne displayed no such symptoms when the meeting was called to order. However, as senior Tories one by one expressed their concerns about dragging many of their potential supporters into the 40p tax bracket, George was becoming increasingly agitated.

He doodled frantically (a later inspection of his drawings revealed that his chosen subject was Nigel Farage with a noose over his neck), muttered incoherently and fidgeted in his seat.

Out of the blue, he jumped up and screamed, “People – Conservatives! – like paying taxes! They ******* love it!”

The Tory grandees present were taken aback. They exchanged worried glances and one of them said solicitously, “There, there, George. No need to get excited, old boy. We’re all friends here, what? Sit down, will you, there’s a good boy. Here, have some water…”

George knocked the proffered glass away with a mighty swipe of his forearm. The glass smashed against the wall, with shards flying all over the room.

“Sod your water!” he shouted. “I mean it! Every poll proves it! The higher the taxes, the more the punters love paying them.”

“Er… how does this work, George? I mean, I’m sure you’re right, but…” asked another senior Tory, having decided that the only way to calm the younger man down was to humour him. Several other 1922ers were surreptitiously whispering into their mobiles.

“There are advantages in more people paying tax at 40p,” repeated George.

“Are you sure you’re still a member of the Conservative party?” asked another grandee who was a bit slow on the uptake.

“I’m not!” screamed George. “I’m not the party’s member! I’m its brain!

“Paying higher taxes makes punters feel they are a success and joining the aspirational classes.

“That means they are more likely to think like Conservatives and vote Conservative.

“If they are paying 40p tax, they have a greater interest in cutting government spending because they are paying for it. All the polling evidence suggests I am right.”

A stunned silence ensued, with the MPs pushing their chairs away from George’s just in case.

Trying to keep him quiet until the paramedics arrived, one Tory engaged  George by questioning his logic. “Are you saying that paying more tax is good for the middle classes?”

“Yes, I bloody well am,” shouted George grabbing his own throat. His eyeballs rolled up and only the whites were visible.

Ignoring the impending explosion, the same Tory continued, “You cannot argue that making more people pay 40p tax is good…”

Another grandee tried to stop him in mid-sentence, whispering, “Oh shut up, for heaven’s sake. Can’t you see what’s going on?”

But the stubborn man wouldn’t be silenced. “I simply don’t follow your logic. What Conservative voters really want is the same as all voters – that is to pay less tax, not more…”

Suddenly George climbed on top of his chair and raised his right arm in the manner of the bronze Richard I outside the Houses. “You’re betraying the party, you reprobate!” he thundered.

“The people who are betraying the party are not me but those who have abandoned our roots,” objected the parliamentarian who still wasn’t getting it.

George foamed at the mouth, jumped on the conference table and tried to kick the man in the face. All those present converged on him and after a brief scuffle managed to pin him down to the tabletop.

At that point two burly young men in white coats rushed in and expertly squeezed George into a straitjacket. As he was being carried out of the room the Chancellor was singing at the top of his voice, “…frustrate their knavish tricks…”

Now, I admit that my account of the incident features a few made-up details added for colour. But the essence is true: this was exactly what the Chancellor declared at the meeting of the 1922 Committee, the inner sanctum of the Tory parliamentary party.

I’m only surprised that he didn’t develop his argument to the logical conclusion that, ergo, introducing a 100p tax on all income will guarantee a Tory landslide. Perhaps George’s illness is only in its initial stages and he’ll come round to that way of thinking later.

As to his colleagues’ stunned reaction to his insane claims, it was verbatim as I’ve described – apart from their calling for an ambulance. But then a writer must be allowed to indulge in wishful thinking every now and then.

 

Smoking kills, as cigarette packs helpfully inform smokers. For once, it’s not just scaremongering: the link between smoking and cancer, first established by Nazi scientists, has since been amply proved.

Yet no one, apart from professional pressure groups, seems to be worked up about the numerous lobbyists defending the tobacco industry in every country that has one.

Alcohol kills thousands every day, but we happily watch commercials advertising various brands that alone can enhance the joy of life. Yet apart from a few Muslims here or there, is anyone bothered? Not so you’d notice.

Cars, though not lethal in theory, will always kill people in practice. Yet the motor trade is amply supported in general-access media. Does this give you sleepless nights? Of course not.

However, the discovery that many scientists who support GM crops are actually paid by biotech companies has created a huge splash in today’s papers. Yet there is no dearth of real news, what with a major European war a distinct possibility courtesy of Col. Putin.

I’m not going to go into the ethics of it all. Suffice it to say that such advocacy is routinely used in support of all sorts of causes, including such sinister ones as global warming.

First the UN, whose role in life ranges from useless to subversive, declared that the earth is dangerously overheating, which is the first scientific discovery ever made by a political organisation. Then the UN laid grants and salaries on a platoon of scientists ready to cross their hearts and hope to die for the cause.

I suppose the way we respond to advocacy largely depends on how we feel about the cause advocated. So is GM technology as impressionistic as anthropogenic global warming? More important, is it as dangerous as smoking?

Not at all. A 2013 review of 1,783 studies dedicated to the effects of genetic modification showed not a single one that as much as hinted at any health risks.

Nor are such risks flagged by reputable organisations. Quite the contrary: the World Health Organisation, the American Medical Association, the US National Academy of Sciences, our own Royal Society all testify to the safety of GM crops.

Yet someone skimming newspaper headlines may get the impression that what’s being advocated here is OTC cyanide. But that impression is utterly false: no one has ever come up with even a hypothesis of any mechanism whereby GM crops may cause harm.

It’s not as if we haven’t had time to find out. In 2012, 16 years after GM was first used commercially, 17.4 million farmers in 29 countries were growing GM crops on an overall area 1.5 times greater than the USA.

And what do you know? While we’re still waiting for any reports of health risks, the evidence in favour of GM is irrefutable: the technology delivers greater, safer, cheaper, more profitable crops – and food that’s as safe as anything produced by any other method. There are also unique benefits.

For example, maize blight can be combated by spraying the plants with insecticide, which is expensive, time-consuming and possibly unsafe. Alternatively, adding to maize the insecticide gene derived from Bacillus thuringeinsis does the job in an instant and without any unpleasant chemicals.

Or look at rice. In 2005 a deficit of Vitamin A, mainly derived from beta-carotene, affected 190 million children, killing 250,000 of them.

The problem is that people in many poor countries rely on rice as their principal food and, wonderful as this cereal is, it’s short of beta-carotene. This potentially deadly problem can be solved simply by splicing into rice a gene of dandelion, a plant that produces beta-carotene.

This isn’t to say that GM technology doesn’t change the ecological balance at all. It does. The Monarch butterfly, for example, may die out as a result, joining about 98 percent of all the species that have ever inhabited the earth.

However, much as I enjoy butterflies, I have more sympathy for those people who die of hunger, malnutrition or vitamin deficiency. Why, I even sympathise with farmers struggling to make a living. Call me old-fashioned but, given the choice, I’d say to hell with the Monarch butterfly.

Let’s face it: every technological or scientific breakthrough changes the ecological balance almost by definition.

Agriculture, for example, is a major factor of atmospheric warming – turning the soil releases heat. Leaving arable lands in their primordial virginity would lower ambient temperature more effectively than any ban on deodorants. Of course, such a commitment to bucolically pristine nature would create a deadly famine.

Mining hydrocarbons unquestionably has adverse effects. Yet without it we’d all freeze in the dark, which effect would be considerably more adverse.

Anyone who has ever visited Pasadena, Texas, knows how awful the air smells there, encircled as the town is with chemical plants. The same can be said about any area housing such installations – yet without them we wouldn’t have life-saving drugs. When the drugs were nonexistent and the air pure, life expectancy was half of what it is now.

Not that I think for a second that any rational arguments or scientific evidence would deter either the rent-a-mob fanatics who scream ‘GM kills!’ or, more critically, those who rent the mob.

These are the same type of people, and often the same individuals, who emulate the Monarch butterfly by happily floating from one subversive cause to the next.

They are the same chaps who protest against nuclear energy, which is the only safe and viable alternative to hydrocarbons; march against ‘fracking’, which is the only way to eliminate dependency on Middle Eastern oil or Putin’s gas; clamour against river dredging that may endanger some avifauna while preventing murderous floods.

These chaps are driven not by any noble impulses but by Luddite hatred – of everything the West stands for, including scientific and technological progress. In the past they joined the communist party; now this is unfashionable, they pour their excess venom into voguish substitutes.

I’d suggest that, by poisoning the atmosphere with their effluvia, they present a far greater ecological risk than just about anything else. And certainly GM crops.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Many complain that most of our politicians have never had a job outside politics, which is why they don’t understand the real world.

Yet the same charge was never filed against the great statesmen of the past, many of whom boasted similarly limited CVs: Burke, Canning, Pitt, Gladstone and Disraeli spring to mind. 

The problem with our politicians isn’t that they haven’t done a stint at a bank or a factory before becoming MPs. It’s that they are, with the odd exception here and there, moral and intellectual nonentities.

Because of such failings they’re incompetent even in what’s supposed to be their sole area of expertise: winning elections.

Witness Dave who didn’t manage to score an outright victory against what was probably the worst government in British history, one that, among its other similar accomplishments, had plunged the country into economic disaster.

All the Tories had to do to form a government was separate themselves sharply from everything Tony-Gordon had done. Opportunities were there for the taking – and yet Dave, the self-proclaimed heir to Blair, didn’t take them.

As a result he had to form a coalition with the party sitting to the left of Labour, which effectively did to the Tory grassroots what our neighbourhood Great Dane does to the bus shelter across the street.

Now there’s every sign that Labour are planning to fight the 2015 elections in cahoots with the LibDems, a marriage so natural that it’s amazing it hasn’t already been made in heaven.

How would you counter the leftwing coalition threatening to sweep into power and stay there long enough to destroy this country? Correct. You’d appeal to your potential support: not just the knee-jerk Tories who’d never vote for anyone else, but also the vast, expanding and vacillating middle class.

This group occupies not only the economic but also political middle ground, the territory where elections are traditionally won or lost. Though naturally gravitating towards the Conservative end, many such people are in conflict.

Their heads, buried in ledger sheets, bank statements and occasionally books on history and economics, say Tory. But their hearts, sullied by a century of socialist propaganda, say Labour.

If the appeal to their heads isn’t strong enough, and the appeal to their hearts isn’t accompanied by too foul an insult to their heads, they’ll vote Labour every time.

You’d think that the Tory electoral strategy writes itself. Make the appeal to such voters’ heads so strong that their corrupted hearts won’t come into play.

At the same time, reassure the knee-jerk Tories that the party is committed, in deed, not just word, to everything they hold dear, from traditional family to the historical sovereignty of Parliament, from sound economic policies in general to those that favour the middle 80 percent specifically.

In parallel Dave could neutralise the threat of UKIP by entering into an alliance with it. Yes, Nigel Farage has said he’d never consider this for as long as Dave remains the Tory leader, and one can sympathise with his feelings.

But I bet he’d feel differently if offered to field UKIP candidates, unopposed by Tory rivals, in a few traditional Tory seats. This would make UKIP a parliamentary party allied to the Tories, a big enough prize for them to agree not to oppose Tory candidates in other seats, especially the touch-and-go ones.

At the same time, those soft, wet Tories who require a strong cerebral appeal to vote with their heads, not their hearts, must be reeled in by sound economic policies (knee-jerk Tories like those too).

This is a fancy way of describing something so simple that even Dave should be able to grasp it. First, the Tories must be able to show how they’re going to sustain economic growth, thereby enabling the middle classes to make more money. Second, they must come up with a taxation policy enabling the middle classes to keep more of the money they earn.

Simple, isn’t it? What I’ve outlined is a strategy that has both depth (reassuring the core market) and width (appealing to the vacillating market outside the core). So what do our narrowly specialised politicians do? Exactly the opposite.

First, Dave alienated the knee-jerk Tories by his fanatical support of same-sex marriage and other inversions of traditional moral and social mores.

Then, instead of committing the country to withdrawal from today’s version of the Third Reich, he promised an in-out referendum halfway through the next parliament.

One doesn’t have to be blessed with an acute olfactory sense to smell a rat. First, many voters will see this promise as a cynical bribery attempt, contingent as it is on Dave’s return to power. Second, it’s absolutely clear to anyone – and certainly UKIP supporters – that Dave and his clique are committed to staying in the EU.

That means that, come the referendum, they’ll add every propaganda resource at their disposal to the formidable resources the EU will bring to bear. The British people will be tricked, scared or coerced into voting to stay in.

And even should they by some miracle cast an ‘out’ vote, there’s no guarantee that Dave’s government will abide by it. In all likelihood they’ll ignore it the same way the EU itself has ignored every national vote that has gone against it.

As to their economic policies, rather than mollifying the middle classes, they’re punishing them, this time by pushing more of them into the 40-percent tax band.

When it was first introduced in 1988, only one in 15 people found themselves in this bracket. Since then, inflation and state extortion have combined to make it one in six – and the new Tory proposal will make the proportion even higher.

If I believed in conspiracies, I’d feel one is unfolding before our eyes: the Tories seem to be deliberately dragging Miliband and Balls [sic] into that Downing Street terrace.

But I believe not in conspiracies but in cock-ups. Trust our intellectually challenged spivs to produce them with metronomic regularity.