Bermant's blog

Eco Zealots

2009-12-23T22:17:00.002Z

I often wonder, if my Father was alive today, what would he have made of all the Eco-Zealots obsessing about Copenhagen. His article that appeared in the Observer back in 1991 sheds some light....

The Observer

January 6 1991

Eco-zealots are my deadliest foes

BYLINE: CHAIM BERMANT

SECTION: Pg. 15

LENGTH: 1085 words

THE GREENS sometimes make me see red. And by the greens I mean not only the Green Party, which was always a non-starter, but the whole jack-pack of conservationists, preservationists, ecologists, environmentalists, organic food faddists, ozone layer loonies, and, of course, the Friends of the Earth, whose initials FOE can perhaps be used to describe them all.

My feelings have been provoked by the news that it is now an offence to break open Speyside mussels, catch Allis shad (a rare type of herring), or bring home an adder.

I have never fancied mussels, can survive on common-or-garden herrings, and have never been tempted to bring home an adder, but it does show the extent to which the FOEs have pushed the best of causes to the most ridiculous lengths.

The FOEs have, of course, been around a long time in one guise or another and their case was perhaps best made by Byron nearly 200 years ago: There is a pleasure in the pathless woods, There is a rapture on the lonely shore, There is society where none intrudes, By the deep sea, and music in its roar: I love not man the less but nature more. Except that the last line is no longer true, and the trouble with the Friends of the Earth is that they are enemies of man.

It is not that they have ever called for euthanasia or abortions though that will come but they regard people as a nuisance. There are too many of them and they are multiplying too fast. They crowd the lonely shore, pollute the deep sea, and beat paths through the pathless woods. Sometimes they destroy the woods altogether and build towns. They eat other animals. They emit foul odours. Their homes and schools and working places spoil the scenery.

One found such sentiments in the back-to-the-land movement of the inter-war years, but industry and industrialists were the villains then, and countrymen and farmers were the heroes. Now any man who makes two heads of corn grow where one grew before, or who plants any corn at all, is a public enemy and if the FOEs had their way, the country would be reduced to a society 'where none intrudes'. In other words, to a wilderness.

As a matter of fact there are few sights more lovely than a neatly ploughed field on a bleak winter's morning, or a waving field of corn on a summer's afternoon.

Some farmers are too greedy and go too far, and the removal of hedgerows is unforgivable, but there is a beauty to be found even in so-called prairies.

Last summer I was driving along the A120 (one of the most attractive routes in the country), when I saw three huge combine harvesters moving line-abreast, like galleons, through a sea of corn, and I was so arrested by the scene that I stopped there in fascination till they had consumed the field.

There is great beauty to be found even in industrial scenes. Late one afternoon I was walking near the banks of the Forth when I suddenly caught a glimpse of the Grangemouth oil refinery. It looked like an illuminated cathedral from the distance. The nearer I approached, the more exciting it became, and I was so overwhelmed by the scene that I was almost indifferent to the sulphurous smells. If the FOEs had been as active in the inter-war years as they are now, that refinery would never have been built, and certainly not in an area of such natural beauty.

There was a time when everyone raged against electric pylons, but that was a generation or two ago. I should imagine if anyone tried to dismantle one now he would be accused of vandalism. Time beautifies all, but I found a quiet majesty in those pylons even when they were first erected. I liked their proportions and shape, and the sight of a whole line of them striding across a windswept moor can give an uplift to even the most jaded spirit.

When the Channel Tunnel route through Kent was announced, all the FOEs in the country, local and national, combined to stop it, some demanding that the lines should go underground.

There was a presumption behind the campaign that trains are ugly and nasty and they despoil any area they traverse, whereas they are not only marvels of engineering, but are often objects of great beauty and they move with grace. One of the joys of walking in the Chilterns, for example, is the sight of the great main line expresses hurtling along the chalky escarpments. The trains would not despoil the beauty of Kent, they would enhance it.

More than that, the great advantage of trains over any other form of travel is the pleasure one takes in the passing scene, but if trains are driven underground they are merely a means of getting from one point to another and cease to be pleasurable in their own right.

It can at least be argued that the parts of Kent affected by the railway are areas of outstanding natural beauty. The same cannot be said for the Essex flatlands stretching northwards from the Thames estuary, bleak, wind-blown, desolate, scarcely inhabited and largely inaccessible. About a year ago plans were mooted to build a recreation facility in the area. At once the cry went up that it was the habitat of some rare breed of gannet or grasshopper (I cannot remember which), and the plans were quickly abandoned.

And if one cannot build anything new, one dare not touch anything old. There is hardly a structure in the country, no matter how ugly, which will not have a preservation order slapped on it, provided it has outlived its original use. The FOEs rightly condemn the glass boxes built since the Second World War, but they cherish the brick boxes built before the first one. They don't mind factories and mills, no matter how dark and satanic they may have been, provided they are museums and not places of actual employment.

Yet if the FOEs are too zealous in some respects they are not zealous enough in others. There was no outcry when Mr Edward Heath eviscerated the counties of England each with its own unique character and historic traditions and replaced them with meaningless areas like Cleveland, Humberside and Avon. And there is none against the despoliation of the English Sunday.

And therein, possibly, lies the main fault of the FOEs. We live in two worlds, an inner one and an outer one, and the former can sometimes be more important than the latter, yet the FOEs are only concerned with the latter. They will throw themselves before earth-movers to prevent the reclamation of a marsh, but are indifferent to the transformation of the landscape of the mind.

Be careful who you call a flat-earther Gordon

2009-12-06T09:38:00.006Z

If anyone needs proof of how out-of-touch the Prime Minister is with the electorate, they need look no further than his recent statement that: "we mustn't be distracted by the behind-the-times, anti-science, flat-earth climate sceptics".

If Gordon Brown, Ed-Milliband and all the other arrogant "we-know-better-than-you" Ministers had an ounce of common sense, they would work a little harder to convince the rest of us why we should be paying trillions of dollars to prevent climate change rather than labelling all of us as idiots.

In fact a large number of us are not deniers, we are merely unconvinced. And climategate (followed by the attempted excuses and cover-ups) has not helped to convince us any further.

I am no scientist (and nor is Gordon Brown one the last time I checked), but the following is unclear to me:

1. Why haven't global temperatures risen during the last ten years?
2. Even if climate change is occurring, it's by no means clear to what extent man is responsible (even warmers don't agree)
3. And even if man is in some way responsible, how will heavy taxation that slows economic progress solve the problem? Surely developing cleaner, more efficient technologies is the solution? I can't imagine the Chinese giving up on economic development for the sake of climate change?

In fact the biggest tragedy of the whole climate change debate is the fact that it's presented as a trade off between economic progress and the environment. Do the government have to tax us out of flying and driving? Is it not possible for example to develop high performing yet environmentally friendly cars and planes?

Unfortunately, many of those in the warming camp have an anti-capitalist, anti-technology agenda, and long for us to return to some kind of pre-industrial age. Sadly, the real victim of all this will be the environment. Issues that most of us agree on such as conserving finite resources, improving air quality, reducing landfill, and preserving our beautiful countryside or drowned out by the obsession with climate change. Yet instead of focusing on measures that can be quantified (e.g. recycling), we are focusing on something that is impossible to quantify. The result is a wasteful 12 day conference at which there is unlikely to be any agreement and at best a very weak agreement that few governments will even bother to keep to.

A balanced climate change debate

2009-11-24T13:50:00.003Z

David Aaronvitch says in this morning's Times:

Lord Lawson’s foundation claims it wants a ‘balanced’ climate change debate. But really it wants to disprove the science.
Of course they are sceptics, but there is nothing wrong with them demanding a 'balanced' debate. They are merely arguing that the 'deniers' (as the Guardian calls them) should also have the opportunity to have their voice heard. That's what balanced debate is about: people for and people against a particular argument being free to argue their position without being drowned out.

Take the latest opinion polls with a pinch of salt

2009-11-24T13:35:00.002Z

Like James Forsyth, I am not overly worried about the recent opinion poll showing a fall in Tory support. But even if you take all the polls from recent months and put them together, it's not looking that great for the Tories. Whilst people may be sick of Labour, they are still unconvinced by the Tories. When you consider that they are going to need the second biggest parliamentary swing in history just to get a majority of 1, you realise what a mountain they still have to climb.

I agree with Janet Daley's analysis that first impressions last, and the Tories have left it pretty late in proving they are heavyweights. Even if the Tories work their socks off during the next six months, I think the best we can expect is a hung parliament.

The majority of voters don't (yet) believe in man-made climate change

2009-11-14T23:31:00.003Z

Today's Times editorial states that:

"A large proportion of the British public does not yet believe that climate change is made by man. It is a stark political failure that they have not been convinced"

So there you have it. You either believe in man made climate change, or you don't yet believe in man made climate change. There are no true unbelievers. But is it a stark political failure? Maybe the British public are on to something:

For starters, the scientific community is by no means unanimous as to the cause of climate change. Secondly, even those who believe in man made climate change cannot agree to what extent our climate will be effected. And thirdly, voters don't take very well to bullying politicians telling them what to think (especially when it's not clear that clear that even they believe in it).

The British public are not quite as ignorant as politicians imagine them to be. Maybe they should be spend a little more time listening to voters and a little less time listening to "experts".

How much more of the nanny state can we take?

2009-11-14T22:18:00.004Z

I am beginning to understand why so many Americans equate big government with tyranny. They need only look across the pond to see what a nanny state Britain has become.

Do we really want to live in a country where the police follow you home from the supermarket because they overheard you threatening to smack your children? Or a country where you need a criminal background check just to give your friend's children a lift home from school?

Sorry to use that awful cliche, but the road to hell is paved with good inventions. The Labour government may profess its desire to protect our children, but treating a quarter of the adult population like criminals isn't the way to go about it.

We have a stark choice at the next general election, between a government that is ideologically committed to intruding into every nook and cranny of our lives, and an opposition that is prepared to roll back the nanny state and protect our freedom.

Despite the Fort Hood massacre, America is still safer than Britain

2009-11-09T20:03:00.004Z

I may have been a little naive, but I never thought that something like the Fort Hood massacre would happen in America. Nevertheless, I stand by what I wrote after the 7/7 bombings, American Muslims are better integrated than their European counterparts:

Unlike Britain, America expects its immigrants to integrate as a condition of citizenship. I doubt that America would give sanctuary to members of the Taliban, or to Osama Bin Laden's spiritual ambassador.
America doesn't have Britain's self-loathing establishment, it's still a country that for the most part believes in itself and its values.
America has a much smaller welfare state. New immigrants are expected to stand on their own two feet and look after themselves, not to rely on the state. A far higher proportion of American muslims have made it to the middle classes compared to their European counterparts. Few languish in urban ghettoes like Rotterdam or Clichy-sous-Bois. Besides, the debate over immigration in the US is about illegal Immigrants from Mexico, not Muslims.
Contrary to the Guardian's alarmist headlines, I'm willing to bet money that there will be no backlash against Muslims. Despite the UK liberal establishment's view of Americans being a bunch of homophobic racist rednecks they are actually a pretty tolerant lot. I would feel a lot safer being an American muslim than a British muslim.

However, I would end with note of caution. Before 9/11, Americans were too naive to believe that foreign terrorists would attack their country. Maybe they have also been a little too naive about home grown terrorism. American muslims may be better integrated, but clearly not all of them have signed up to the American dream.

It's important to forgive, but isn't it important to show remorse too?

2009-10-15T06:55:00.004+01:00

We are often lectured by liberals on how important it is to forgive and how forgiveness has paved the way for reconciliation in South Africa and peace in Northern Ireland, but why do they never talk about showing remorse?

A case in point is the "Forgiveness Project", dedicated to "helping build a future free of conflict and violence by healing the wounds of the past". It has just hosted a reception for the IRA bomber Patrick Magee at the Houses of Parliament. This is a man who was quoted as saying "I stand by what I did".

I'm all in favour of conflict resolution, but why should we forgive an unrepentant mass-murderer? The victim must forgive, but it seems that all the perpetrator has to do is stop killing.

Forgiveness has become little more than a get out of jail free card.

The special relationship - 1945 - 2009 - RIP

2009-09-01T07:53:00.002+01:00

The row over the decision to allow Abdul Baset Ali al-Megrahi to return to Libya is the final nail in the coffin of our special relationship with America.

It serves us right. If we are going to be an unreliable ally, why should America take any interest in us?

The rehabilitation of Chamberlain

2009-09-01T07:26:00.003+01:00

As our collective memory of World War II fades into the distance, I worry that history is repeating itself.

You only have to read William Rees-Mogg's piece: Does appeasement look so bad, 70 years on? to see where we are heading. A revisionist view seems to be taking hold of many in the establishment - the fashionable view of Churchill is that he was a bloodthirsty warmonger who needlessly bombed helpless German civilians. Chamberlain by contrast is seen as a man of peace who took every opportunity to seek a diplomatic solution to Germany's agression.

As the years go by, this argument will only get stronger as people choose to forget the fact that Hitler's war against both the Jews and his neighbours began long before 1939.

These are worrying times.

Is solitary confinement torture?

2009-08-30T09:32:00.002+01:00

Whilst on the subject of compassion, I came across a fascinating article in the New Yorker suggesting that solitary confinement is a form of torture. Some refer to it as a "living death". It would appear that being locked up all day in a tiny space for years on end eventually turns you into a vegetable.

I'm no liberal, but I'm not sure about the merits of locking up Zacarias Mousssaoui, Richard Reid and others for 22 hours a day. These guys should be reminded every day for the rest of their lives about what they did, but after several years in solitary, I'm not sure that Mousssaoui will be be in a mental state to be aware of anything.

The stink caused by Al Megrahi's release just won't go away

2009-08-30T09:02:00.004+01:00

Some pressing questions about Al Megrahi's release:

1. Could they not have shown compassion by giving him the best palliative care possible whilst keeping him in jail? (He would probably get better healthcare than anything offered in Libya) Why does compassion mean giving a dying mass murderer his freedom? Surely, life imprisonment means losing the liberty to choose where you die as well as where you live (as Geoffrey Alderman has argued).
2. Was Al Megrahi's release motivated by Britain's oil interests? If this is indeed the case, the government has to fall. Any government that chooses to release a mass murderer in order to secure a business deal hasn't a shred of legitimacy. This has the potential to turn into a massive scandal.

Kenny MacAskill is either naive or stupid

2009-08-25T07:20:00.002+01:00

It has been reported in this morning's papers that Kenny MacAskill, the man who took the decision to free the Lockerbie bomber from jail on compassionate grounds has accused him of breaking an undertaking not to celebrate his release.

The Scottish Justice Minister has shown himself either to be incredibly naive, stupid or both to release a convicted mass-murderer (that has shown no remorse), to a country run by a dictator, who was clearly going to exploit the opportunity of his release.

Kenny MacAskill must be praying that Abdul Baset Ali al-Megrahi will die very soon, but I wouldn't bet on it on it. Some of you may recall Ernest Saunders who was jailed for his part in the Guinness Affair. Saunders successfully won his release after convincing the judge that he was suffering from pre-senile dementia associated with Alzheimer's disease, which is incurable. He made a full recovery.

At least the Americans are having a serious debate about healthcare

2009-08-17T06:32:00.005+01:00

The most depressing thing about Daniel Hannan's recent outburst over the NHS is the total lack of debate in the UK over the whole subject. It has all been reduced to a juvenile slanging match over "Our wonderful NHS vs America's heartless private healthcare system".

Everyone, even Obama's opponents, agree that the US healthcare system is in serious need of reform, and they all have different ideas about what needs to be done, but at least they are having a debate about it.

Meanwhile, our response in the UK has been little more than yankee bashing with all the usual ignorant nonsense about Americans without healthcare insurance being left to die at the scene of an accident.

Question: Why does no one in the UK ever discuss the alternative systems in much of Europe where they have a hybrid system of both universal coverage but also private sector provision of healthcare? Answer: Because no one, even the Tories it seems, wants to harm the status quo. Tony Blair's tenuous reforms aimed at bringing more private sector healthcare provision were met with howls of protest about how immoral it is for private companies to profit out of people's health.

Our overcentralised Soviet era healthcare system is not "the envy of the world" and it's about time we grew up and starting taking a serious look at what our European neighbours are doing to improve people's health rather than obsessing about US healthcare.

Back after a very busy two months

2009-08-17T06:30:00.001+01:00

I'm back after a two month absence.

Have been so busy, not had a spare minute to blog. Hope to start posting again this week.

Lies, damned lies and opinion polls

2009-06-10T13:21:00.005+01:00

The one thing that's certain in British politics right now is that nothing's certain. Ever since the expenses scandal, everything is up in the air. No one knows what's going to happen next.

We keep hearing that Labour faces meltdown in the event of a general election, but we also hear that David Cameron is far from popular. We hear from several political commentators that Alan Johnson can stop the Tories, yet no-one in Labour wants to risk testing the theory. Labour have been wiped out in the local and European elections, but the Tories relatively low share of the European vote by no means guarantees them a parliamentary majority in a general election.

Of course none of these statistics mean anything. Labour did spectacularly badly in the 2004 European elections, yet they won the general election the following year. And remember the Tories who scored the highest vote in the 1999 European elections and who then went on to fail miserably in the 2001 general election?

We should by now have learnt our lesson from the 1992 election, that you can never rely on the opinion polls. The other lesson we should learn is that history doesn't necessarily repeat itself. When the Tories changed their leader from Margaret Thatcher to John Major, it helped them win the 1992 election. But no one knows whether Labour changing their leader would bring the same result (remember how highly everyone thought of Gordon Brown?). Besides, most of the electorate are unfamiliar with Alan Johnson.

It is probably safe to assume that Labour are unlikely to win the next general election, but will the Tories have a working majority? We may have to wait another 11 months to find out. One thing's for sure - with the current 'anti-politician' mood around the country, the era of landslide majorities is over. That may not be a bad thing. Despite two massive election victories, Tony Blair's achievements were relatively modest. But with a narrow majority, the Tories will be under a lot more pressure to turn things around. They might just deliver.

Fewer traffic lights make safer roads, the same is true with speed cameras

2009-05-05T07:48:00.004+01:00

It has been reported in the Times:

For six months, lights at up to seven junctions in Ealing will be concealed by bags and drivers will be left to negotiate their way across by establishing eye contact with pedestrians and other motorists.
Ealing Council believes that, far from improving the flow of traffic, lights cause delays and may even increase road danger. Drivers race towards green lights to make it across before they turn red. Confidence that they have right of way lulls them into a false sense of security, meaning that they fail to anticipate hazards coming from the side. The council hopes that drivers will learn to co-operate, crossing junctions on a first-come first-served basis rather than obeying robotic signals that have no sense of where people are waiting.

The move follows other successful experiments with removing traffic lights in continental Europe. In the Dutch town of Drachten, for example, the removal of traffic lights at one big junction resulted in crashes falling from 36 in the four years before the scheme was introduced to two in the next two years. The average time for each vehicle to cross the junction fell from 50 seconds to 30 seconds despite a rise in the volume of traffic.

Maybe it's time we also took a similar approach with speed cameras. Despite their trebling in number during Labour's tenure in Government, their contribution to road safety has been negligible. During the same period other European countries have seen large drops in deaths and serious injuries on the roads, but without the presence of speed cameras. Maybe it's time Labour stopped treating us like five year olds?

Compulsory sex education won't reduce teenage pregnancy

2009-04-28T07:48:00.006+01:00

Sex education campaigners remind me of Marxists around the time of the fall of the Berlin wall. As one communist regime after another collapsed towards the end of 1989, they told us that communism hadn't failed, it simply hadn't been implemented properly. But sometimes you have to ask yourself, if something has failed so miserably, maybe there is something inherently wrong with it.

Over the last 20 years, sex education has become ever more explicit, and is taught to an ever larger number of schoolchildren, yet the rates of teenage pregnancy have skyrocketed. And what's the response of sexual health campaigners? Even more explicit sex education, and make it compulsory (currently only one in 2,500 parents withdraws children from sex education classes).

The Times reports that sexual health charities have warned that allowing parents to opt out, even if it involved only a small number, was an infringement of young people’s rights - in other words, your children do not belong to you, but belong to the State.

Sex education isn't necessarily a bad thing as long as there is some emphasis on abstinence, but heaven forbid we "prevent young people from making informed choices". To quote Simon Blake, national director of the sexual health charity Brook: “Young people need to understand the law – that you can get contraception, that you can have an abortion – and understand the health benefits of practising safer sex. It would not be right for anyone to tell them that this is wrong, but it is OK for them to be told that some people believe it is wrong.”- So let's follow the logic of his argument - Maybe I shouldn't tell my children that child abuse and child exploitation is wrong. After all, it's just that I believe it's wrong and they need to make their own mind up on the subject.

We have no problem telling people that it's wrong to drive fast, that they should abstain from smoking, and that they should drink less, so why are we so squemish about telling people to abstain from sex?

It hasn't yet dawned on Labour that the era of big government is over

2009-04-26T07:49:00.005+01:00

When you see how rapidly the New Labour project is disintegrating, you start to realise what a house of cards the whole thing was. In their heart of hearts, how many Labour MPs truly believed in Blairism? Sure, there were enough of them who were happy to go along with Blair because they were hungry for power, but after 12 years in office, they seem to have forgotten why they were returned to power in the first place.

Labour MPs were never great fans of the free market, but as long as the city was booming and the tax receipts were flowing in, they were prepared to tolerate it. Then came the financial crisis and money dried up. Now Labour are biting the hand that has fed it for the last 12 years.

Whilst there is widespread revulsion about the greed of bankers, there is no evidence that the electorate has lurched to the left. The financial crisis of the last eighteen months has not closed the chapter of Reaganism/Thatcherism, but on the contrary is likely to reopen it - Millions of voters have seen their tax bills rise and corresponding rises in public spending without any tangible results. Now to cap it all, they are saddled with decades of debt that their children and grandchildren will inherit. We may not see a return to the Thatcherite policies of deregulating the financial markets, but sooner or later, we will have to address, as Thatcher did, the public sector spending that has spiralled out of control.

The 2009 budget was a golden opportunity for Gordon Brown to seize the agenda and salvage his (and New Labour's) reputation for prudence. He could accept (to quote Tony Blair) "that the rules of the game have changed" - that the money has run out and the State needs to live within its means like the rest of us. But instead of asking himself why the Tories are leading in the polls, he and his fellow MPs he have drawn all the wrong conclusions: Namely, that capitalism has failed and that the rich are responsible for our debt. That the state can keep on growing and the rich can pay for it.

Reputations take years to build but only months to unravel. After Thatcher became Prime Minister, it took nearly two decades for Labour to become electable. Gordon Brown seems determined to undo all that progress in a mere matter of weeks and drag Labour back to where it was in the early 80s. Labour is beginning to look and sound more and more like it was in the days of Michael Foot - Controlling, statist, anti-business and anti-aspiration. Tony Blair once said of John Major's government: "I lead my party, he follows his" - the same could be said about Gordon Brown.

Labour, like the Tories before them, have forgotten that power corrupts

2009-04-19T08:07:00.003+01:00

I long ago concluded that the present Government was worm-eaten, exhausted, dishonest, incompetent, lazy, mendacious, ignorant, rotten, false, disreputable, deceitful, unsavoury, squalid, abominable, soiled, piratical, shifty, discreditable, infamous, improper, obscene, hateful, impure, degraded, dilapidated, shabby, grovelling, discredited, renownless, tarnished, disgraced, shameless, creeping, abject, two-faced, unscrupulous, villainous, treacherous, untrustworthy, prevaricating, sinister, crawling, insincere, fishy, spurious, unclean, felonious, infamous, venal, base, vile, bribable, rancid, disloyal, scheming, unsavoury, sickening, fetid, nauseating, putrid, defaulting, mouldering, evil, vicious, damnable, maleficent, wrong, ineffectual, mean, inferior, contemptible, superficial, irrelevant, expendable, powerless, pathetic, nugatory, impotent, jumped-up, cheap, insalubrious, flea-ridden, unsound, nasty, baneful, foul-tonged, cursed, unwarranted, execrable, damned, abnormal, unreasonable, virtueless, peccant, sinful, unworthy, hopeless, incorrigible, tergiversating, brutalised, nefarious, culpable, scandalous, worthless, flagitious, gross, indefensible and unpardonable to say the least.

This was Bernard Levin's analysis of the Tory Government following Tony Blair's election as Labour leader back in 1994. 15 years later, the same could be said about the current Labour government.

Labour have enjoyed an unprecedented three terms in office, but the downside of being re-elected again and again is that you tend to forget that it was the voters who put you there. Complacency sets in and you start to believe that you are entitled to remain perpetually in power.

After 12 years in office, Labour have become sleazy, dishonest and like the Tories before them, downright nasty. Some have commented that Labour's sin is worse as it aspires to the high minded ideals of social justice and equality. How naive!

There is an old saying, "power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely". Labour are suffering from the same old malaise that affects all parties that have been in power too long. I think we have now reached the point where an economic recovery will make little difference to Labour's re-election prospects. Once you have the lost the trust of electorate, there is no gratitude from them.

Is the Damian McBride affair Gordon Brown's "Black Wednesday"

2009-04-19T00:04:00.005+01:00

In April 1992, in the midst of a deep recession, the British electorate gave the Conservatives the benefit of the doubt and narrowly re-elected them to a fourth term in office. But just five months later, their reputation for competent handling of the economy was shattered by Black Wednesday. It has taken 15 years for their reputation to recover.

As Gordon Brown emerged triumphantly from "saving the world" towards the end of 2008, there were many who may have likewise concluded "better the devil you know than the devil you don't". But after the latest revelations emerging from the Damian McBride affair, it's clear that the current administration is more interested in smearing political opponents (including those in its own party) than saving the economy. After all this, can anyone honestly say they trust these guys to run the country?

The private - public sector divide replaces the north south divide -

2009-03-19T06:06:00.002Z

Interesting article about the north - south divide in today's Times. During the 80s and 90s, you heard constant reports in the press about how there was a growing wealth gap between the north and south of England. Now this has been replaced by the public - private sector divide.

So whilst the recession has forced the private sector to cut pay and make redundancies, the public sector carries on as though nothing has changed. How is this possible? Very simple. Labour have created over a million new public sector jobs (and a million loyal voters) in the past 12 years. With a general election just 14 months away, Gordon Brown will want to keep his voters happy and if he has to bankrupt the rest of us in the process, so be it.

Should the Tories win the next election, public sector reform will prove to be as divisive an issue as curbing the Unions was in the 80s. Make no mistake, David Cameron has an unenviable task ahead of him.

Europeans talk the talk about Gitmo but they can't walk the walk

2009-03-11T23:59:00.000Z

The Times has revealed that a Taleban commander responsible for increasingly sophisticated bomb attacks on British soldiers in Afghanistan is a former detainee of Guantánamo Bay.

You can understand why EU countries are in no hurry to offer hospitality to former Guantánamo inmates (but hold on a minute, weren't they all calling for Gitmo to be closed down?).

Maybe it's time Britain stopped preaching to the world about what a wonderful success Northern Ireland is

2009-03-11T23:22:00.002Z

The recent murders that have taken place in Northern Ireland should serve as a wake up call to the British and Irish government about what has happened in Northern Ireland.

There have been demonstrations and candle lit vigils (as if the dissident republicans care), the Pope has added his voice to the chorus of condemnation, and politicians have promised that the perpetrators will be brought to justice (yeah right, remember Robert McCartney?). And even if the perpetrators are caught, you can be sure they will be freed within a year or two as a gesture towards peace and reconciliation.

I have said it all before. As a result of the "peace at all costs" mentality of the British and Irish governments, Northern Ireland has become a basket case economy (70% of expenditure is by the State), a Mafia state governed by thugs (Gerry Adams and Ian Paisley) and policed by armed loyalist and republican thugs, who carry on with their racketeering, protection rackets, drug dealing and beatings unchallenged.

The first stage of a peace process is to stop the bombings and shootings, but it doesn't stop there. Unless all parties agree to the rule of law, we are back where we started.

What future does a country have that tolerates this kind of thuggery?

2009-03-11T23:00:00.003Z

Welcome to Britain, 2009

My Father came to the safety of these shores in 1937. Had he remained in his country of birth just a few months later, he would have perished at the hands of the Nazis.

Now, seventy years later, we allow those who hate this country to openly vent their hatred towards us and our armed forces. For how long will our deluded establishment that continue to tolerate this thuggery? How long will they continue to preach that you can counter extremism by turning the other cheek?

It makes me worried for the future of my children.