Category: Blog

While coherent arguments in favour of staying in the EU are nonexistent, we aren’t short of strong arguments to get out, courtesy of the EU itself.

Every statement uttered by this wicked organisation is one such. Yesterday, for example, Britain was criticised by the European Committee of Social Rights for requiring immigrants to show some command of English.

This, according to this august body, violates some provisions of the European Social Charter, first adopted in 1961 and boasting among its signatories a dozen countries compared to which Nazi Germany was a laissez-faire paragon of justice.

What I find amusing is the composition of the Committee, featuring representatives from such historical bastions of social rights as Estonia, Russia, Bulgaria and France. Words like ‘glass houses’ and ‘stones’ spring to mind.

Estonia’s presence is particularly telling, considering her own position on linguistic uniformity. The knowledge of Estonian is an ironclad requirement for citizenship there, even for those, mostly Russian, residents who were born and bred in the country.

Hence in 1992, shortly after the country went independent, 32 per cent of Estonian residents found themselves stateless. By now that proportion has come down to about eight per cent, still quite high.

I’m not blaming the Estonians – quite the opposite. Russian was imposed on them by a brutal supranational power trying to merge the country with others into a mythical Soviet nationality, riding roughshod over the local ethnic identity, including the language.

As part of that programme, swarms of Russians settled in Estonia, attracted by the readily available accommodation kindly vacated by KGB execution squads and arresting parties. (About a quarter of Estonia’s population were executed, imprisoned or deported.)

Naturally, since most business there was transacted in Russian, the new arrivals’ incentive for learning the devilishly difficult Ugro-Finnish language was somewhat understated.

Predictably, when independence came, those linguistically challenged Russians found themselves at a loose end, feeling they belonged neither in the country of their birth nor really in Russia. One can sympathise with them, but one can also understand Estonians: language is perhaps the most important adhesive holding a nation together.

Now, if we recall Terence’s saying Quod licet Jovi, non licet bovi, we realise that, while Estonia sees herself as Jupiter, her representatives try to thrust us into the bull’s slot. This is an unfortunate double standard.

For the same principles apply to us. We too are being dragged into a supranational, wicked (though not yet violent) body aiming to toss all European nationalities into a cauldron, bring it to a boil and cook it long enough to produce an unpalatable stew destroying the flavour of each ingredient.

We too are trying to protect our nationhood, and we too realise that our language is indispensable to the task. English is the language of England – everything else is but a side line.

Not every resident of a 60-million nation at the world’s crossroads can be expected to be a native speaker or to use nothing but English at home. But it’s a vital requirement that every permanent resident should have enough English to integrate into our cultural, economic, social and political life.

This is especially critical now, when every other adhesive seems to have fallen by the wayside. Christianity is no longer seen as a factor of national unity, English culture is a terra incognita even for most Englishmen, English history might as well have begun earlier this year.

So what’s left? Some ill-defined ‘British values’ Dave Cameron bandies about, which presumably include the time-honoured practice of two men marrying each other? Among such existential ruins, the English language looms larger than ever before.

If Estonia’s presence among countries teaching us ‘social rights’ is amusing, Russia’s is downright obscene.

This is a country that denies every political liberty Englishmen took for granted centuries ago, one where pensioners starve, 28 million people live under the poverty level of £175 a month, qualified medical care is available only for the rich, every election is falsified, political murder is rife, daily racial attacks are common, a country that routinely jumps at the throat of her neighbours like a rabid dog, committing beastly atrocities in the process.

Now Putin’s poodles are howling at us about ‘social rights’. (The term confuses me. Is it the same as ‘human rights’? Is the right not to speak your country’s language human, social or both?)

Speaking of poodles, until a few years ago Bulgaria had acted in that capacity to Russia. Roughly at the time the Social Charter came into effect, Bulgarian assassins did the Russians’ ‘wet work’ all over Europe, when their pay masters were otherwise engaged. That’s another country amply qualified to act censorious towards us.

Then there’s France, with her maniacal insistence that anyone who speaks native French is French. The logical inference is that those who don’t aren’t – can we please be allowed the same latitude?

This diktat is tiny compared to the overall EU tyranny. It’s but a molecule of the aforementioned stew being concocted in Brussels. Yet I’m astounded that some Englishmen don’t find it sufficient by itself to want to shake the EU dust off their feet.

Putin, reputably the world’s richest man, with some estimates of his wealth reaching $200 billion, doesn’t really need this present. It’s just a small addition to his existing fleet.

Nor does £25 million constitute a significant outlay for the billionaire donor, Roman Abramovich. The yacht he gave to Putin is no more than a trinket, like a teddy bear one gives to a girlfriend who has a jewellery box full of diamonds.

Actually, my interest in Russian gangsters is tepid at best. My main concern is our response to Russian gangsters, especially those in the Kremlin. Specifically, I’m fascinated by the kid gloves the West invariably dons when dealing with political evil.

That our foreign policy is guided not by morality but by expediency is obvious and, at times, understandable. However, our notion of what’s expedient is catastrophically wrong.

Political evil responds not to leniency but to a show of force. The force doesn’t necessarily have to be military, although that should be at least implicit. More important is a show of moral strength – an explicit statement that good won’t tolerate evil as of right.

Alas, just when such a firm stand vis-à-vis Russia would be vital, the West’s sphincter loosens and the kid gloves come onto its trembling hands. What results is appeasement, something one would have thought was irrevocably compromised in 1939.

Policy may be held hostage to expediency, but morality shouldn’t be. Yet only now does the West begin to make vague noises about Putin’s evil. Until political cards fell just so, morality had remained shoved deep into our sleeve.

That Putin is an evil gangster has been known since 1992, when Marina Sal’ye completed her investigation of Putin’s shenanigans in his official capacity as Petersburg’s Deputy Mayor. (Unofficially he was assigned by the KGB to control Mayor Sobchak, just as Gen. Korzhakov was performing the same function for President Yeltsyn.)

At that time Putin was flogging illegally everything he could lay his hands on, including submarines. The nicest touch was exporting $100 million worth of raw materials in exchange for food a starving Petersburg badly needed. The raw materials promptly left Russia, yet no food arrived.

Already in those early days Putin’s purloined wealth stood at tens of millions. When he ascended to power, the KGB colonel began to move up the ranks, using an elaborate network of third-party launderers to amass what could be the world’s greatest capital.

All this has been known in the West for at least 20 years. In fact, back in 2007 a CIA report already put Putin’s ill-gotten wealth at $45 million – yet the report was never made public.

Even the first two aggressive wars Putin started, against Chechnya and Georgia, didn’t loosen our governments’ tongues. It’s only when the emboldened thug grabbed the Crimea, attacked the Ukraine and had a Malaysian airliner shot down that our appeasers began to stir to life, if in a gingerly fashion.

Suddenly the US Treasury begins to talk about Putin’s corruption, nepotism and embezzlement of state funds. So what else is new?

Speaking to BBC Panorama, Adam Szubin, who oversees sanctions in the US Treasury, said all this has been known for “many, many years”. Why such craven silence until now then?

One can almost see that it may be imprudent for Western governments to acknowledge publicly that the leader of a major nuclear power is a common bandit. But surely our press, with its much-touted commitment to free speech, shouldn’t have such compunctions?

Yet I have it on good authority that both The Wall Street Journal and our own FT are sitting on a wealth of information about the underground network of laundering conduits channelling Putin’s (and other gangsters’) money into the West.

Every detail has been laid bare – so where are the sensational reports? Are we waiting for Russia to launch a nuclear strike before we become more forthcoming with the truth?

Likewise it has taken Britain nine years to complete an inquiry into the murder of Alexander Litvinenko. Correction: what took nine years wasn’t completing the inquiry, it was publishing its results. The actual investigation didn’t even take nine weeks – the case was open and shut almost instantly.

This means we’ve known for nine years who murdered Litvinenko and who, in Sir Robert Owen’s phrase, ‘probably’ ordered the Mafia-style hit, albeit with a more sophisticated weapon.

In other words, we know that Putin is definitely a gangster and ‘probably’ a murderer, However, our response is emetically timid.

On the mendacious pretext that we need Putin’s support in Syria, Cameron’s government has reacted to the new/old facts with insouciance. It’s as if we are so weak that we desperately need Putin to bomb Syrian schools and hospitals first, wait for the rescue workers to arrive and then, with typical KGB perfidy, hit them with a secondary strike.

In an uncharacteristic show of candour, John Major, then Britain’s PM, identified Neville Chamberlain as his role model among his predecessors. Cameron probably feels the same way, and the spirit of Munich still befouls the air in our corridors of power.

Have we forgotten that 1938 was followed by 1939, and not just chronologically?

 

Polygamous marriages are illegal in Britain, no doubt regrettably for some.

For one thing, having, to take an arbitrary number, four wives may diminish the urge to break the adultery commandment. Surely observing the Decalogue is important, isn’t it?

Then four wives can wait on a man hand and foot without each expending too much effort, and hence peevishly whingeing all the time about wasting her best years by becoming a skivvy and household drudge.

The emotional benefits of having four women sacramentally committed to the man they love shouldn’t be dismissed either – the more love the better; there isn’t enough of it in this cold-hearted world.

Of course every silver lining has a cloud. In this instance, one has to consider the hardship of fighting off four mothers-in-law – handling even one often proves an insurmountable task by itself, without being outnumbered.

Also, when a man has four wives, they tend to lead a cossetted life, usually under lock and key or at least close guard. This means they won’t be able to get a job, unless of course they can work out of home, by, for example, running a telephone sex service.

Therefore it may fall upon the man to support them all, which not many of us can afford, especially if the wives insist on keeping up with the latest fashions.

But not to worry: this is where the new universal credit system comes in. Our bright legislators have devised a stratagem to make polygamy pay in the crudest financial sense.

Polygamous marriages may be illegal, but there’s a Catch 22 there or, more appropriately, Catch 4, which is the number of wives a man is allowed to abuse under Sharia law.

Such marriages are recognised in Britain if they took place in a country where they are legal, meaning, without beating around the bush, a Muslim country.

When such a gaggle of a family blesses these shores with its arrival, the man and his main wife can get an average allowance of about £499 a month, plus £170 or so for each additional wife.

However, the new code won’t recognise polygamous marriages at all, which on the surface of it has to be seen as a step in the right direction. But the deep truth pursued by our legislators often lies beneath the surface.

Delving deeper, one realises that now the three extra wives will be able to claim single-person benefits, amounting to £317.83 each. Hence a proud husband of four wives will be over £600 a month better off.

This is yet another example of how expertly our governing spivs can wield money, the principal weapon of mass destruction at their disposal. For any system of taxes and benefits can be adjusted to produce any desired social effect.

Since incontrovertible evidence before our eyes shows that the effect our spivs desire to produce is to rip the traditional social fabric to tatters, the new legislation will serve this end nicely.

This upsets even such a lifelong champion of multi-culti diversity as me. For somewhere in the back of my mind resides a fading memory of Britain being a civilised, which is to say Western, country ruled by law – not by the subversive impulses of moral and intellectual pygmies like Dave, Tony, Jeremy et al.

In such a country it’s incumbent on the government to discourage behaviour traditionally deemed objectionable, promote behaviour considered acceptable and punish behaviour classed as criminal.

English Common Law and the government guided by it are the best tools mankind has so far developed to achieve such ends. Yet the new legislation and the attendant legal lassitude deliver a reverberating slap in the face of our tradition.

Diktats of the same multi-culti diversity that, between you and me, I’m not really a lifelong champion of, prevent our government from explaining the facts of life to our Muslim friends living here – and making sure the explanation sinks home.

These facts ought to be plain to any averagely bright child, and would have been a couple of generations ago:

Everybody is free to espouse any religion or none, provided he doesn’t thereby violate the law of the land. In this green and pleasant land, the law has Judaeo-Christian antecedents. Hence it makes polygamy a crime.

Crimes must be prevented or, failing that, punished in any country ruled by law, it’s as simple as that. It’s not enough to issue wishy-washy declarations about not recognising polygamous marriages, especially while surreptitiously making such unions pay. Polygamous men must be brought to account.

Crimes must be investigated, and it wouldn’t be unduly hard to establish that a man’s co-habiting niece, cousin and family friend are in fact the extra wives his law allows and ours bans. He should then be either imprisoned or deported to a place whose laws he prefers.

 All it takes is the will and admittedly a bit of an effort, considering that there exist, conservatively estimated, 20,000 such ‘families’ in Britain. Yet this is a small price to pay for protecting what’s left of our civilisation – unless of course we don’t wish to protect it.

 

 

 

 

Don’t get me wrong: they neither stole anything nor killed anyone. Their crime is much worse. They’ve committed an egregious, mortal sin against the very essence of modernity.

In his Invitation to a Beheading, Nabokov gave a prophetic intimation of their crime. His protagonist, Cincinnatus C., was about to be executed because everyone around him was transparent while he was opaque.

Nabokov knew that modernity finds it easier to overlook theft or murder than to forgive divergence from the dominant ethos. A criminal attacks only a few individuals; a sane person in a mad society attacks everyone.

Rampling and Caine did just that by voicing dissenting views against the sanctimonious clamour around this year’s Oscar nominations. Many prominent actors and directors are going to boycott the ceremony because no black actor or actress has been nominated.

Modernity has neither mind nor morality, but it has the actuarial sense of a CPA with half a century’s experience under his belt. This is applied to flushing out and punishing perpetrators of modernity’s worst crime: discrimination.

The word has two meanings, one positive, one negative, but both are equally reprehensible to today’s lot.

In its positive sense, the word means exercising qualified judgement, which, though not criminal by itself, hints at another, slightly lesser crime: elitism. In its negative sense, the word means preferential treatment of one group at the expense of another, than which no worse crime exists.

The reasons for preferential treatment are immaterial, especially if the discrimination in question is perceived to be aimed against any group seen at the moment as being a downtrodden minority: off-white races, homosexuals, cripples, Muslims or – defying simple arithmetic – women.

Hence if a Muslim is denied the post of bishop, a woman is overlooked as a candidate for leading a bayonet charge, or a one-legged man doesn’t win a dancing contest, no rational explanation will be accepted. The crime of discrimination has been committed. Off with the offender’s head.

Every group must faithfully reflect the demographic makeup of the population at large, and any deviation is allowable only to favour a group perceived to be underprivileged.

Specifically in matters racial, if blacks constitute about 10 per cent of the US population, that must be their proportion in any random sample of humanity, except the prison population, where they are demonstrably overrepresented (about 40 per cent).

This lamentable fact can only be put down to the visceral racism built into the US judicial system, not to the possibility that, for whatever social, economic or cultural reasons, blacks tend to commit more than their statistically predictable share of crimes.

By the same token, if no blacks appear on the roster of Oscar nominees, it’s only because the Academy members are all bigots and, quite possibly, secret members of the Ku Klux Klan. No other explanation will be accepted, such as that this year no black gave an outstanding performance.

By offering that very explanation, Miss Rampling and Mr Caine put themselves so far beyond the pale that they might as well be on Mars – even if regrettably we’re not yet so advanced as to clap them in prison.

“One can never really know,” said Charlotte Rampling, “but perhaps the black actors did not deserve to make the final list.” Oh yeah? Perhaps, Charlotte? You think it possible? Why don’t you go back to France where you come from. Well, where you belong at any rate.

Michael Caine saw fit to put in his penny’s worth too: “In the end you can’t vote for an actor because he’s black.” You can’t what, Michael?!? Maybe you can’t, but everyone else can and henceforth will.

Piers Morgan, who faithfully upholds British journalism’s recent but burgeoning tradition of idiocy, delivered what he doubtless saw as a devastatingly witty line: “MISSING: A set of marbles. If found, please return to Charlotte Rampling.”

If I were Miss Rampling, rather than just someone who has been having impure thoughts about her for decades, I’d be wiping sweat off my brow. At least she has only been accused of loopiness, not charged with a felony.

I’m sorry about only being sarcastic about this, rather than analytical. It’s just that, unless one is a professionally qualified psychiatrist, it’s impossible to discuss madness seriously, and modernity is certifiably mad.

In a different mood, one could point out that blacks have fewer chances of winning Oscars because they get fewer roles, reflecting their proportion in the population. One could also cite a long list of outstanding black actors who have won Oscars, from Sidney Poitier to Denzel Washington (who won it twice).

By way of a practical suggestion, one could even moot the possibility of assuaging the prevailing thirst for racial justice by introducing a separate category of the best performance by a black actor.

Why not? Women, another oppressed minority, have their own category, so why not blacks? If discrimination is good for the goose, it must also be good for the gander.

Oh well, never mind. Instead of making such subversive suggestions, I’m off to start a campaign for increasing the number of mutes among voiceover actors.

 

 

A group of 71 British doctors are agitating to expel Israel from the World Medical Association.

Scientists, like our own Stephen Hawking, want to bar their Israeli colleagues from international congresses.

The American Anthropological Association wants to stop any links with Israeli academic institutions.

Covert boycotts on Israeli academics and students are being imposed on US campuses.

Hatred of Israel is evident, and such poison never fails to find an appropriate vessel. For the British doctors the pretext is that Israeli medics torture Palestinian patients – a lie of which Julius Streicher would have been justly proud.

The assumption in the academe seems to be that Israel is worse than any other country, for no other country is subjected to the same treatment. Moreover, Israel’s sins are presumably so great that they fall upon every Israeli, regardless of personal culpability.

For, even if we accept the lie that the Israeli medical profession is one collective Dr Mengele, one can’t think offhand of any heinous crimes Israeli anthropologists may have committed. Even assuming that they conduct experiments on the bones they dig up, this seems morally unobjectionable.

Actually one could put forward a few other countries whose behaviour is more conducive to opprobrium.

Russia springs to mind, what with money laundering being her principal economic activity, murder (including in the streets of London) her chosen way of settling political disputes, lupine aggression against neighbours circumscribing her foreign policy, and nuclear blackmail her method of dealing with the West.

Saudi Arabia is another possibility, what with her blood-curdling jurisprudence, cannibalistic rituals, suppression of every freedom, and sponsorship of global terrorism. Boycotting Saudi scientists may be futile because none exist, but symbolic gestures matter.

And what about China, which deals with political opponents in demonstrably un-Western ways? Though Chinese scientists seem to produce anything of value only after they emigrate, some do stay, and surely China is a worse place than Israel?

In short, there are no rational reasons for harassing Israeli academics, but there must be powerful irrational ones. Anti-Semitism is one such, though it would be simplistic to reduce the entire complexity of the problem just to that.

Following the events of 70-80 years ago, saying ‘down with Jews’ has become unfashionable. However, since the underlying sentiment is extant, these days anti-Semitism often mutates into anti-Zionism.

The stratagem lacks novelty appeal: in the Russia of my youth the slogan ‘Down with Zionism’ routinely appeared in newspapers under the kind of hook-nosed cartoons that could have been copied from Der Stürmer.

However, if we believe Thomas Mann that most intellectual attitudes are latently political, academic anti-Zionism must have not only racial antecedents but also political ones.

The greatest gravitational pull in the academe is known to be exerted by the political left. Though I can’t cite statistics to back up this observation, the anecdotal evidence is strong enough.

The dominant implicit ideology of the left is hatred of the West, though explicitly this sentiment can take various forms. Hard-line communism is one such, and it’s alive on campuses, though these days it’s mostly relegated to the fringes, at least in the Anglophone world.

However, communism has been compromised by its universal record of success in one area only: mass murder. Advocating it in earnest may drive a person into intellectual oblivion (or else to the leadership of the Labour Party).

Other conduits for hating the West are more productive, with the rhetoric of Third World diversity, anti-colonialism and multi-culti sanctimony the most productive of all.

When a Western policeman can be portrayed as violating the rights of a presumably persecuted group, this is grist to the mill of anti-Western indignation. However, when millions are hacked to death in places like Rwanda or Burundi, this is seen as ill-considered but understandable quaintness.

Hence the problem with Israel is that it’s not only too Jewish but too Western as well. Therefore its efforts to defend itself against millions of fanatics have to be castigated, whereas the Muslims’ openly expressed desire to kill every Jew is viewed with sympathy or at least compassionate understanding.

Just to think that not so long ago academics could think logically and dispassionately. These days they just emote, usually in a nasty way.

 

     

 

  

 

 

 

 

Sorry, the public-inquiry report only says that the 2006 murder was ‘probably’ approved by Putin. Now there’s a surprise.

‘Probably’ means we aren’t sure, there exist other possibilities worth considering. I struggle to think what they might be, but hey, God didn’t give man creative imagination for nothing.

Exercising mine, I propose that Litvinenko’s death might have been suicide. He was so overcome by guilt over his anti-Putin activities that life became unbearable.

First he exposed in a series of articles Putin’s profitable links with organised crime, which are so intimate that it’s no longer possible to see where the Mafia ends and Russia’s government begins.

Then, in his book Blowing Up Russia, he accused Putin of having bombs planted in Russian blocks of flats to lay the blame on the Chechens, thereby kicking off the second Chechen war and tightening his hold on power.

And then, as the last straw, Litivinenko began to gather a dossier documenting Putin’s career in the KGB that, according to some of the documents, slowed down at some point following some homosexual shenanigans.

Litivnenko took stock of what he had done, and the enormity of it all dawned upon him. There he was, besmirching the limpid reputation of a man so admired by the right, the left and Peter Hitchens. The strong, traditionally Christian leader, respected by Nigel Farage and Marine Le Pen – the kind of leader Hitchens, Booker and Corbyn wished we had in Britain.

That was too much shame to bear. Even a quick bullet through the head was too easy a punishment for such calumny, decided Litvinenko. Hence he had that last cup of tea with his two Russian friends and former KGB colleagues Lugovoi and Kovtun, went to a local chemist’s, bought some OTC polonium-200, swallowed it and died, having first endured inhuman agony for three weeks.

A likely story? No? Wait, I have others up my sleeve. Two Martians… no, that doesn’t work. Upon mature deliberation, nothing does.

There is no ‘probably’ about it, chaps. Alexander Litvinenko was murdered on Putin’s orders by Andrei Lugovoi and Dmitry Kovtun, the first now a ‘parliamentarian’, the second a ‘businessman’. (The quotation commas, in case you’re wondering, are there to say that there’s no real parliament in Russia, and precious little business outside the governing KGB-Mafia junta.)

Let’s not be surprised about it either. What if a zoological inquiry established that lions devour weaker animals and adders sting those they don’t like? We wouldn’t be surprised then, would we?

Russia, ladies and gentlemen, is governed by the KGB, the most murderous organisation in history. There are more KGB officers in the Russian government (85 per cent) than there are lawyers in the US Congress (43 per cent). Russia’s KGB rule is even more pervasive than the rule of law is in America.

And murder is encoded into the KGB’s DNA as indelibly as carnivorism is encoded into the DNA of predatory animals. For Putin, murdering Litvinenko wasn’t a likely reaction, nor a probable one. It was the most – nay, the only – natural thing to do.

The response to the report on the part of some of our media is well-nigh emetic. One detects the fear that by calling a murderer a murderer we risk losing Putin’s invaluable support in Syria.

One would have thought that even in our reduced circumstances we have sufficient capability to bomb Syrian villages flat, which is exactly what Putin is doing in the good tradition of his sponsoring organisation. Russian bombs have killed more Syrian civilians than ISIS has managed – a task to which the combined might of Nato is deemed to be inadequate.

The Foreign Office is scared of souring Britain’s relations with Russia. Perish the thought. What, spoil our friendship with a regime that regularly threatens the West with nuclear annihilation and, by way of foretaste, commits nuclear terrorism in the middle of London to murder a British subject? Who would ever want to be so unfriendly?

The only sensible way of dealing with the first kleptofascist regime in history is introducing a quarantine to limit its toxic influence on the West. Any prospective Russian visitor must be vetted and have his visa denied if there is any suspicion of any links with either the ‘klepto’ or the ‘fascist’ part.

Any Russian with KGB associations must be banned from entry as a matter of course – regardless of his current position in business or government.

Our foreign policy must proceed from the same principle on a larger scale. Rather than meekly submitting to the nuclear blackmail that has been the linchpin of Russia’s foreign policy since she was ruled by Stalin, Putin’s idol, we must build up our military muscle and confront the blackmailer with stern resolve.

In trade, we must impose a total boycott on Russian goods and persuade our transatlantic and European partners to do the same. A country must be civilised to be part of a civilised world – and Russia isn’t.

None of this is going to happen of course. We’ll make some indignant noises, perhaps impose sanctions on a few Russian officials, complain to the UN. In short, we’ll act with the same craven spinelessness we’ve always displayed towards Russia.

One does wonder though what Putin’s Western champions think of him now. What they’ve always thought, would be my guess.   

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A few months ago the FTSE 100 stood at over 7,000. It’s now 5,707 and dropping, which is rotten news, and not just for people on fixed incomes.

The knock-on effect of the turmoil in financial markets is a slowing manufacturing output and plummeting prices of commodities, including oil, which is now 80 per cent cheaper than just over a year ago.

All this brings into question certain ironclad economic presuppositions, such as the benefits of globalisation and service economies.

Globalisation is supposed to work miracles by shifting manufacturing and services to places that can do those things most efficiently. The system is perfect, or would be if economies were run by computers rather than people. And that stubborn species tends to frustrate the best-laid economic plans with predictable regularity.

This is mainly because its life isn’t determined by economics to the extent economists, Marxist or otherwise, want us to believe. Economic performance is only one part of human behaviour, and often not the most important part.

Religion, culture, politics, social life are all vital. Each can at times trump economics individually, and they always do so collectively.

The habitation of much of the human race is in China, which is run by a communist regime. And every communist regime introduces a strong element of slave labour into the economy.

China is a prime example of that irrefutable law of history, with billions of Chinese subsisting on what used to be called coolie wages. (In Russia, whose regime is typologically still communist, 26 million live below the poverty level of a whopping £120 a month.)

Observation going back to the days of the Roman Empire suggests that slave economies can’t succeed in the long run. They’re like a house built on termite-ridden foundations – looks good for a while, but then everyone inside is buried under the rubble.

Sure enough, the Chinese economy is slowing down precipitously, especially if we make allowances for the mendacity of China’s statistics – another ever-present feature of a communist regime.

Alas, the nature of globalisation is such that China’s troubles become ours. When Chinese shares tumble downhill, ours are caught in the avalanche, bringing into question the wisdom of tying our economic destiny so closely to an evil regime.

The slowdown in the world’s second-largest economy reduces the global demand for oil and, since the law of supply-demand has never been repealed, its price too.

That alone, however, doesn’t explain the immense drop. Another explanation is the policy pursued by another evil regime, that of Saudi Arabia.

The Saudis think that by bumping up their oil production, thereby driving the price of crude down, they can combat all three threats to themselves, those coming from America, Iran and Russia.

America has made a huge investment into developing cost-effective techniques for exploring the world’s almost unlimited reserves of shale hydrocarbons, thereby threatening the Saudis’ position. This is a long-term investment, but in the short term the US fracking industry is saddled with a $250-billion debt.

The speed of getting into the black depends on the oil prices: the lower they are, the less cost-effective fracking becomes, the longer it’ll take the industry to repay its crippling debt.

Following the removal of economic sanctions Iran, the Saudis’ mortal enemy, has just begun to market its own oil. Its ability to threaten Saudi interests also depends on the prices staying at a reasonably high level.

Russia’s urge to be an active player in the Middle East, in a role that doesn’t suit the Saudis, also depends on high oil prices. When they linger at around $30 a barrel, Russia’s economy becomes a basket case, and her ability to flex her military muscle is significantly downgraded.

All these factors explain the Saudi-driven drop in oil prices. They also indirectly explain why the Bank of England has reversed its planned policy of raising interest rates to the historical average of 2-3 per cent.

Conservative wisdom says that low interest rates and inexpensive fuel are good for the economy. The former makes it easier to finance research, modernisation or expansion; the former lowers the cost of manufacturing and transportation.

So it would be – in a real economy. Ours, however, isn’t real; it’s virtual.

Since we don’t make much of anything, the benefit of cheap fuel is trivial. Since our economy hugely depends on the stock market, the inevitable dip in energy-company shares hurts us for real.

Low interest rates also make it easier for the government to borrow promiscuously and drive our sovereign debt up beyond its present, already stratospheric level. Yet another adverse effect is the anaemic performance of our pension funds, which are bigger than in the rest of Western Europe combined.

Nor can we rely on the EU to bail us out. In France, a state of economic emergency has just been declared; in Germany the industrial growth rate has dropped down to zero.

Suddenly we discover that in our virtual world economic verities no longer apply. But actual reality never disappears – it lays underwater mines to blow to kingdom come virtual reality and everyone who has the misfortune of living within it.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Mostly scoundrels, is the answer to that one. And also Oxfam.

Caring about one’s own wealth is fine, provided one doesn’t care about it too much, at the expense of one’s soul. However, caring about someone else’s wealth betokens at least two deadly sins, envy and greed.

That’s why those who refer to socialism as the religion of envy have a point. The salient observation is that Western communicants of this creed typically don’t want to enrich the poor.

They want to impoverish the rich (however broadly this category is defined), provided they themselves can parade their flaming conscience all the way to the bank. There are all sorts of alliterative terms on both sides of the Atlantic to describe this type, such as ‘limousine liberals’ or ‘Bollinger Bolsheviks’.

It’s in this context that Oxfam’s cri de coeur can be properly understood. This global confederation of poverty charities is worried about a lamentable fact that in reality is neither lamentable nor a fact.

According to Oxfam (and Credit Suisse), the top one per cent have as much wealth as the remaining 99 per cent of the world combined. For Oxfam it goes without saying that this situation is both deplorable and remediable.

The implicit belief is that a man who has to make do with a million pounds is severely disadvantaged compared to someone who has a billion. Yet such a pauper would only feel that way if he were consumed with envy, thereby forfeiting any claim to sympathy.

What should matter to a decent person is having enough for himself and his family, rather than having as much as his neighbour. But then giant corporations, especially those in the charity gig, don’t think like decent people. Their aspirations are akin to those of our governing spivocrats; their goals are mostly self-serving and destructive.

The methodology by which Oxfam arrived at that calculation is questionable: wealth is interpreted not, say, as the means of acquiring the civilised amenities of life but strictly as the difference between personal assets and liabilities.

Hence a City stockbroker earning £300,000 a year, having a £2,000,000 portfolio but carrying a £3,000,000 mortgage on a Kensington semi is dirt-poor compared to a Chinese de facto slave only earning enough to buy a cup of rice a day but not owing anyone a single Yuan.

But leaving that aside, Oxfam ought to be reminded of absolute rather than relative wealth (or poverty) as being the sole valid criterion of economic wellbeing. And more equality usually doesn’t mean less poverty: it’s always easier to equalise at the lowest common denominator.

For example, economic inequality in Victorian England was smaller than it is in England today, and yet only an intrepid commentator would suggest that there was less poverty then.

Oxfam’s business is relieving poverty, not reducing wealth, yet both methods can narrow the gap that so worries this venerable organisation. Of the two expedients, the second is easier while the first is more moral, but our top charities aren’t unduly concerned about morality.

So fine, I’m prepared to accept for the sake of argument that economic inequality is so evil that any method of reducing it is worthy, including dispossessing the offensive one per cent.

Since, as we know, charity begins at home, I propose to get the ball rolling by reducing, or ideally cutting out, the salaries of those running and operating our top charities, including Oxfam.

Charities, after all, are supposed to channel aid to its ultimate targets, not into their own pockets. Alas, both here and in the US a typical major charity appropriates between 65 and 90 per cent of all donations for its own use.

Here, for example, are the top executives’ salaries at Britain’s major charities: 

1. London Clinic £850,000 to £860,0002. Nuffield Health £770,000 to £780,000

3. St Andrew’s Healthcare £750,000 to £760,000

4. Wellcome Trust £590,000 to £600,000

5. Royal Opera House £566,000

6. Anchor Trust £420,000 to £430,000

7. City & Guilds £400,000 to £410,000

8. Legal Education Foundation £360,000 to £370,000

9. Children’s Investment Fund Foundation £350,000 to £360,000

10. Church Commissioners for England £330,000 to £340,000

Oxfam’s top executive pockets a mere £125,000 a year, which is modest by these standards but still quite far removed from the breadline. Am I alone in thinking this is outrageous?

In fact such practices are par for the course. They vindicate the main economic principle of modernity: giant organisations, commercial, governmental or charitable, operate chiefly for the benefit of their managerial elites, whatever their ostensible remit or declared goals.

Reversing this trend should be the first step the Oxfam brass could take to their coveted aim, reducing economic inequality.

I expect an announcement shortly that henceforth they’ll forgo their salaries and work solely to assuage their conscience and indulge their taste for justice. You know, the way charities used to work before socialist corruption set in.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This may sound paradoxical. Surely it’s not losing but winning that takes skill and athleticism?

Technically, yes. But look at it this way: why would a player want to throw a match? For example, I’ve been playing tennis for 40 years without ever once losing on purpose.

The only possible reason for doing so would be the player or his friends betting heavily, and against the odds, on his opponent. Now, since I’m the only person who has ever bet on my tennis matches, the temptation to throw one has never arisen.

Only professionals find themselves in the privileged position of being able to cheat for money and, by the sound of it, quite a few take advantage of it. And it does take a lifelong effort to get to professional level.

A whistleblower has just released documents suggesting that 16 top-50 players have thrown matches over the last decade. The details haven’t yet been released, but in such cases detection is easy. Casinos know all about it, which is how they flush out blackjack card-counters.

What gives counters away is their irregular, seemingly irrational, betting patterns. When a croupier knows that the pack is stacked in favour of a player who then quadruples his bet, the dealer realises that the player knows it too. And the only way of knowing is to count cards.

Investigation specifically into tennis corruption started in 2008 and characteristically involved a Russian player, Nikolai Davydenko, then ranked fourth in the world.

The Russian was playing the 87^th-ranked Vassallo Arguello and, sure enough, Davydenko was coasting. He easily won the first set and was up a break in the second.

Suddenly there came such an outburst of heavy betting on Arguello that after a while bookies had to stop taking any more bets. Davydenko promptly forfeited the match, and the winners tried to collect.

However, Betfair, an online betting exchange, voided $7,000,000 in bets, the first time it had ever done so, and informed the ATP that something dodgy was afoot. Most of the winners were traced to accounts in Russia, where sports corruption stands tall even against the backdrop of a generally criminalised economy.

An investigation was triggered, but the evidence was deemed insufficient and the player wasn’t suspended. However, if you’ll pardon a cliché, the absence of evidence isn’t always the evidence of absence. It’s certainly not proof of innocence, as anyone familiar with O.J. Simpson’s first trial will confirm.

At the time at least a dozen leading players came forward complaining that they had been approached by criminals with offers (or threats) to throw matches. Again most offers and threats were enunciated in guttural Russian accents.

The present scandal hasn’t yet reached a stage at which the culprits are named. However, it’s already known that Russian criminal syndicates are behind the current round of corruption as well.

In the good tradition of English empiricism, one must respond to the perennial underlying question: ‘So what are we going to do about it?’

That’s an easy question to answer. In the good, if relatively recent, tradition we’re going to cover up the corruption wherever possible and perhaps slap a few wrists that stick too far out to be covered up.

What should be done, apart from punishing those immediately guilty, is a different matter. First, a general comment.

Any social order ought to be arranged in a way that encourages the good parts of human nature, which most of us have, and discourages the bad parts, which we all possess.

Anyone who has ever visited a race course or a casino, looked at the people’s contorted faces and heard their demented shrieks will know that betting brings out the worst traits of human character. Such activities should be banned, or at least not widely legalised, as a matter of principle.

The argument that betting will then simply go underground doesn’t quite wash. Laws exist not only to penalise harmful activities but also to express society’s attitude to them. Some laws may not be enforced, some may not be enforceable, but they all serve a social purpose, either positive or negative.

Second, the global syphilitic contagion of Russian criminality must be checked.

Russia is the first major economy that’s founded, organised and operated almost entirely on Mafioso principles. Hence it befouls everything it touches, inflicting moral damage not only within its own domain but everywhere it’s allowed to operate.

England is one such place, with our government acting on the moral dictum first formulated by Emperor Vespasian: pecunia non olet. Money doesn’t smell.

We welcome dirty Russian money (and all serious Russian money is dirty) without being overly inquisitive about its source or excessively bothered by its attendant gifts, such as corruption and a spate of Mafia-style hits all over London and the home counties.

We weigh billions pumped into our economy against a dozen corpses here or there and find the balance acceptable. The heavy, cumulative moral damage isn’t allowed to tip the scales. This isn’t something we weigh any longer.

The ball is in our court, yet we don’t even try to hit it. Careful it doesn’t hit us, where it hurts.