18th March 2013
Something I noticed yesterday morning was how quickly George Osborne said we would protect government employees and sevice personnel in the Cypriot bailout. I could see that was breaking ranks with the rest of Europe – treating our people as more important than others – and this morning I can see why he did it. The terms of the bailout have caused a bit of a storm. However we are all good people. We do not mind washing our dirty linen in public. We will get it sorted. Vladimir Putin has called the levy on depositors unfair, unprofessional and dangerous. The German Finance Minister says his country had never wanted to penalise savers with less than 100,000 Euros. It was a Cypriot idea. Stock markets are wobbling. Robert Peston thinks it is a right mess.
I heard the Labour MP for Mitcham and Morden, Siobhain McDonagh, tell the World at One at lunchtime how her mobile phone was stolen from her car outside a friend’s house in October 2010. From my own experiences I would say the way it happened strongly indicates it was American Gang arranged. I expect Ms McDonagh forgot all about it until she was contacted by police in June 2012 to say they had discovered a whole swathe of her text messages on a computer hard drive as part of their Operation Tuleta investigations. Ms McDonagh has just received very substantial damages from The Sun newspaper for being in possession of her private information. They say however they did not steal the phone themselves which I am sure is correct. When I have disposed of things like old computers on Ebay in recent times I am pretty sure those have been sold to Gang helpers. The hard disks will then have been searched for anything of interest. The Gang are completely obsessive about information. Their efforts to obtain it simply would not be believed. So I am sure there will have been a reason for going through Ms McDonagh’s texts but only she will be able to work out what that may have been. The only connection I can think of is that the head office of Crimestoppers UK is in Morden to whom I wrote three times in the autumn of 2009. I mention the charity in chapter 5 of my book.
As with all facets in life you get some good and some bad spies. There is a Peter Taylor Panorama programme being broadcast tonight about the lead up to the Iraq war in March 2003 saying that two good spies at the time were the CIA station head in Paris and a senior MI6 gentleman who travelled to Jordan in January 2003. The first paid $200,000 via an intermediary to Iraq’s foreign minister to be told that Saddam Hussein would have liked to have had Weapons of Mass Destruction but did not. The second was given the same information by the head of Iraq’s intelligence services. The CIA as an organistion maintain that the minister’s information still allowed the possiblity of WDM to be in existence. Tony Blair’s Cabinet Sercetary, Lord Butler, generously says about his boss and others that in part they were misled by others and in part they were misled by themselves.
A Leveson framework has been agreed. Two Party leaders were talking with Oliver Letwin for the Conservatives and four members of Hacked Off until 2.30 this morning I understand. Representatives of the press were being consulted on the phone. Two of the three groups are entirely happy with the outcome, with the politicians especially putting their own spin on things. In it’s making I feel it is the very best outcome that could have been expected. I am especially pleased that the the victims’ spokespeople were included in the talks. It gives a clear signal to the rest of us that if you sit down to talk about your differences, with a specific timetable if needed, it is possible to achieve a positive outcome for all. Unfortunately only three newspapers are openly on board. You cannot expect the earth. I am sure there will now be a determined rearguard action by some in the press. They can decide to take their ball away if they like but they had better watch their step. They have enough future industry structural problems to worry about without falling out with the court of public opinion as well. It might be a bit more productive for them to move forward by thinking how to sell a few more newspapers or achieve profitable online operations.
The mechanics of the deal are quite ingenious. There will be no new staute, just an addition paragraph to the Enterprise and Regulatory Reform Bill. That will say that any royal charter created after 1st March 2013 cannot have it’s provisions changed externally. One of the provisions in this particular charter will be that it can only be altered by two thirds majorities in both Houses of Parliament. I imagine there would be nothing to stop Parliament passing a law in the future to abolish this Royal Charter and decide something else but it would be unkind to say something like that after everyone has put in so much hard work.
I heard on the radio news this evening that Mr Putin has said he was not consulted at all on the Cypriot bailout before it was agreed by the Europeans and the IMF.
The new president of the Police Superintendents’ Association was on Today this morning. She is hoping for a change in culture at the top of policing in England and Wales and for box ticking to be replaced by a bit of contemplative thought on what the police should really be about.
The trouble with politicians is that they are a little bit here today and gone tomorrow. I am sure they realise that as much as anyone else. Friday’s FT reports the government is likely to create a new independent infrastructure body to consider large scale projects, such as airports and railway lines, and makes recommendations over periods of 15, 25 and 40 years.
The same paper reports that the government are setting up a cyber crime unit to be part of the national crime agency. The security minister, James Brokenshire, has called for all businesses to be much more cyber security conscious.
That edition highlights a UN report just published which says the dramatic economic rise of developing countries is being accompanied by pragmatic policies within them to help the poor. The trend means that by 2030 80% of the world’s middle classes will live in developing countries.
A small piece in the issue records the head of Israeli military intelligence giving a speech saying Iran and Hizbollah are creating a back up plan for the supply of arms to the latter in case the Syrian government should fall. The duo are trying to build influence within parts of the rebels.
Philip Stephen’s article calls for a diplomatic push in Syria. Interestingly he says a lot of the Middle East can be looked at in terms of Islamic denominations, and therefore rivalries. Sunni rulers in Turkey, the Gulf states and Saudi Arabia. Shia Muslims or their affiliates are in charge in Iraq, Syria and Iran.
Something I hadn’t realised is that all small bank deposits of under 100,000 euros, as pointed out in today’s FT editorial, are normally protected under EU rules. That means the suggested terms of the Cypriot bailout do look a bit unfair.
19th March 2013
The draft of the Royal Charter for regulation of the media is published on a government website this morning. Once the Recognition Panel is in place the press’ own Regulator can apply to be recognised if it wishes. Equally, after that, the Panel can withdraw it’s approval of the Regulator at any time if it considers that appropriate. Once up and running the Recognition Panel will have a board of between 5 and 9 members with each sitting for up to 8 years. It must publish all it’s workings. If it wishes to change it’s rules or dissolve itself that must be unanimous and supported by a two thirds majority in each House of Parliament. It’s membership will be decided by a four person Appointments Committee who themselves will be determined by the Commissioner for Public Appointments. No media person or politician is allowed to be a member of the Appointments Committee nor the recognition body itself. The Charter’s provisions are highly detailed so I hope it will work. However I have no doubt that the Gang’s professionals will be sifting through it as I write to see if they can find any loopholes to be exploited.
Without too much contemplation at all it seems, News International (the Sun and the Times), Associated Newspapers (the Daily Mail), the Telegraph Media Group (the Daily Telegraph) and Northern and Shell (the Daily Express and Daily Star) say they have grave misgivings. The charter draft has immediately gone off to their expensive lawyers for high level advice. They are obviously upset that they were not in the negotiating room on Sunday night. However I feel they should recognise that the other groups must have considered, if they were there, no agreement would have been possible. One thing the Prime Minister has been clear about is that he wanted to bring the talking to an end. If, after reflection, the newspaper editors still believe they have been wronged they need to rationally explain to thoughtful members of the public why that is. They should not feel the need to resort to emotional arguments.
One group who naturally feel threatened by the new provisions are our 1100 local newspapers as represented by the Newspaper Society. They are worried about being unjustly sued by an avalanche of upset people manipulated by a far more powerful organisation than they, for no more than telling the truth. It is a fact of life I am afraid that the Gang naturally pick on the weakest in society. They are the easiest to deal with.
I suspect this story might have got something to do with President Obama visiting the region tomorrow. It is alleged that a chemical weapon has been fired this morning in northern Syria killing 15 people. The Syrian government say that rebels did it, the other side say they did not.
The FT’s editor, Lionel Barber, has just been on the World at One. He confirms he was not consulted in any way about the negotiations after midnight on Sunday. He says his paper has not yet decided whether it wants to join the new press regulator. That will be a joint decision between editor and publisher. All the preparatory work carried out by Lord Hunt, for the press’ own scheme, has been lost. Mr Barber is worried about the cost implications of the new framework and the open door it gives to vexacious readers to tie a newspaper up in knots.
Part of the Sunday night Leveson deal was that an additional clause would be added to the Crime and Courts Bill saying that any newspaper not in the new regulatory regime will potentially be liable to pay punative damages if it is held to have broken our libel laws. Bearing in mind that judges are independently minded people I am not sure how that will work in practice but no doubt things will become clearer in due couse. It is plain however that the government didn’t want the clause in the the same Act as the external Royal Charter stiffening provision. This morning’s radio news confirmed that the bill, with the addition, was passed in the House of Commons last night with a majority of over 500.
The Labour Chancellor, Alistair Darling, was on Today this morning talking about Cyprus. He said that the government bailout of Northern Rock in 2007 was a bitter experience for him but in many way it was a blessing in disguise. It taught us to take the right action when the really big economic shock came a year later. You make it crystal clear to savers that their money is safe. Otherwise there would be a run on the banks and, because their model is to lend more money than they actually have, the whole edifice would collapse. For that reason he says just about everything that could have been done wrong in the current Cypriot situation, has been. We are all very lucky there have not been panic withdrawals from banks in Spain and Italy. He also makes the point that the EU would not have dared to act in the way they did unless Cyprus were such a small country.
You do wish sometimes people could see they are being used. To coincide with the tenth anniversary of the Iraq war there has been a surge of Sunni militancy in the Shia ruled country recently. Jim Muir was on the programme and told us 25 were killed outside the Ministry of Justice in Bagdad last Thursday. This morning possibly 50 have been slaughtered in a coordinated attack of car bombs, roadside bombs, suicide bombs and shootings in the city.
I heard Tony Blair speak on the 7am radio news this morning. He was talking to the BBC on the tenth anniversary of the Iraq war. However he also had some words on Syria. With the certainty Mr Blair expresses sometimes he forcefully said we should intervene militarily in the country to save innocent lives. I fully agree we must stop the bloodshed. However these things, in my view, are seldom so black and white as Mr Blair suggested.
It was also on the radio news this morning that Crimestoppers are currently running a campaign, originally started in Holland three years ago, to make people aware if their next door neighbour is growing cannabis commercially, so they can report them to the authorities. They are posting scratch cards to 210,000 households. When the white circle is disturbed you know the smell you are looking for. Then the operations director of the charity was also on the World at One at lunchtime. He said there was a 15% rise in the number of skunk farms found in domestic properties here between 2011 and 2012. I now have little doubt that Ms McDonagh’s mobile phone, as I wrote about yesterday, is a connection to make with those reports. However whether it is a Gang diversionary tactic or an MI5 source giving the wink to BBC journalists I wouldn’t like to say. In any event cannabis recognition is a public interest story and it is good to have it known about.
We have been through a tough time financially, for several years now. With the penetration the Gang have had throughout our society that was bound to happen. However we are gradually putting them in their box where they belong. It will get better. And people are beginning to look towards the future. There were three unconnected pieces in the FT on Saturday all talking about economic advancement. The global view came from John Authers who makes the point that communist China’s brand of capitalism has been achieving 7.5% growth for decades. With a new leader their politics will probably evolve as well. And, thanks to the rising economies of the developing world, during all our woes the planet’s GDP just kept on rising. In his article the former Tesco boss, Sir Serry Leahy, suggests we need to refocus so that private business can get out there to join that lean, mean, competitive international environment and bring the bacon home for Britain. Then the editorial focuses on Europe asking that we should play more as a team with the debt free economies who should increase their imports to help the others. And asking for speedy banking union to provide rigidity to the whole framework.
A stand alone piece of news there is about the previous week’s EU summit, the last attended by Mario Monti. It seems he gave a very clear analysis of how things have been, and are, working out economically in the eurozone. The article says policies have been good but they take too long. Voters get fed up because they cannot see the fruit of your labours. That applies as much to Mr Osborne I feel as it did for Mr Monti. Apparently someone said at the summit it is such a shame Mr Monti was only in office for one year.
I see from the opposite page that there was no funny business on the timing of formation of the Israeli coalition. It seems there has always been a six week deadline for negotiations and, as often happens with these things, some insistent participants only signified their agreement at the last possible moment.
Gillian Tett wrote about a ballroom she had been to recently in Washington, in her article in last weekend’s FT. As recently as 50 years ago, part of a person’s lifespan, only white people were allowed into the building. Today America has a coloured President. No one blinks an eye. It is amazing how quickly attitudes and perceptions can change. If you ever get downhearted you should think of that. Who knows where we will be in 50 years time.
Also in that magazine was a piece by Simon Kuper on approaches to life. He suggests people tend to either seize the moment or pursue long term outcomes, typically to achieve wealth and gooh health. Another way of putting it I feel is that we either act rashly and emotionally or look to strategic goals. He then goes on to say that even art, in our consumer driven society, has to be drawn into the world of the instant, get rich quick buck. He says that monetise is a word for our times.
I am not sure if it was that which got me thinking: possibly, together with a jointly funded holiday I am shortly to take with some members of my family. I do not like money because it is all about power. It is the Gang’s obsession. However I think it is more fundamental than that. Involving yourself with it is an expression of your emotion. It allows you to make that impulse buy when out shopping. And knowing the security it gives you, you are very reluctant to let it go. Should someone suggest they can save you a bit of tax legally they are often knocking at an open door. And if you are not thinking properly losing it is far more important to you than it should be.
Today’s FT says Tehran itself has calculated that the value of it’s oil exports will drop 40% in the next 12 months. India, it’s second biggest customer, is planning to stop imports due to sanctions. Japan and South Korea are also reducing quantities.
Having read the paper reporting on the suggested Cypriot bailout to date it is pretty clear it has been an unmitigated disaster. Trying to get pissed in breweries comes to mind. The future of European banking union now appears in doubt if nothing else. The culprit appears to have been the unelected European Central Bank. Irrespective of where Russian money in Cypriot banks was coming from it would have been polite for the EU to have liased with the Russian government on their proposed course of action.
The editorial there does not raise hopes for President Obama’s visit to Israel tomorrow. It says that with Israeli West Bank settlements as they now are a viable Palestinian state is almost inconceivable. It also notes that the housing ministry is in the portfolio of the pro-Israeli settlement Jewish Home party.
From where I stand now I don’t think it is ever necessary to hold a grudge or not forgive someone. It is just a question of having good information and a bit of understanding. That is why I want to get this story out. However human beings are prone to have bad feelings and retain bitterness. Janan Ganesh was writing on the opposite page the Mr Miliband used to think poorly of Mr Clegg after the Lib Dems sided with the Conservatives in May 2010. He would not share a platform with him at the time of the electoral reform campaign a year later. However that all seems to have changed since the end of last year. They seemed to work very well together last Sunday night. And that, I believe, is because the Labour leader has got a much better depth of knowledge about things than he had.
20th March 2013
I don’t think anyone in Cyprus would deny they are in a mess. That may not be the fault of the 99% but it has happened nonetheless. The question is what to do now. The place is insolvent. It is not a time for sticking your head in the sands. The EU have done the figures and worked out, I believe, that the country’s debt must be reduced by 6 billion Euros. Otherwiwse they would never be able to pay off the overdraft they had left. It seems possible Germany might have said to Cypriot politicians, if you do not want to accept our suggestion, we will let you decide how you want to raise the sum. The Cypriot Finance Minister is in Russia at the moment.
I have started to get a few unwanted sales calls over the last weeks. What annoys me is how they invariable start off by saying this is not a sales call. When they try and start up a conversation I ask them sternly what they want. They never hang around too long. There is a BBC webpage available today saying that a fitted kitchen company called DM Design from Cumbernauld in Scotland has been fined £90,000 by the Information Commissioner’s Office. It failed to check, before making cold calls, whether the recipients had registered with the Telephone Preference Service to say they didn’t want any.
Another page is about the damning power of culture. A girl, Maria Toorpakai Wazir, was born in the Pakistani tribal area of Warziristan, fiefdom of the Taliban, 22 years ago. In those parts women are are not allowed to leave the home unless accompanied by a man and with their skin fully covered. With pressure like that Maria pretended to be a boy from the age of four. She was athletic. Fortunately for her she has a very supportive father. She turned out to have a flair for squash. Her father managed to get her into the squash academy in Pershaw. There she was ridiculed for being femail but worse than that she and her family had death threats raised against them. She decided enough was enough and withdrew back to her home. However she did not give up. She started sending emails to squash organisations throughout the world, thousands over three and a half years, asking for an opportunity to show her potential. Eventually she received a reply from the Canadian player Jonathan Power who took up her cause. In 2011 she started training with him in Toronto. One day she hopes to be the best female squash player in the world.
I did think, after her medical treatment, Malala Yousafzai would return to Pakistan. However she has obviouly decided that is not what she wants as she started school in Birmingham yesterday. I think it is extremely brave of her to start a new life, with her father supporting her her, in our strange Western culture.
Pat Geenty, chief constable for Wiltshire and ACPO lead on missing persons, was on Today this morning saying that from the end of the month police services are changing their policy when dealing with reports of a missing person. There are about 900 such incidents every day and police have to investigate each one. The chief constable said there is a particular problem with children’s homes, of which we have one in our road as I mention in chapter 5 of my book. It is a principle at such establishments I believe that children are not restrained in any way and every time a youngster walks off it is easy to just call the police. Mr Geenty suggests the silly position has been reached where highly trained police officers are almost being used as taxis. In the future reports of missing persons will be prioritised, with an attendance not always considered necessary, in order to save scarce resources. That I think will encourage care home staff to act more like ordinary parents. If your ward goes missing you first of all try and find him or her yourself before calling in the authorities.
There seems to be a consensus growing that we need to go down to a micro level to get our ecomony moving forward again. Lift that big brother feeling everyone sees towering over them so that local entrepreneurs can use their own initiative to make a bit of money for themselves and benefit the rest of us in the taxes they generate. Lord Heseltine was on the programme saying just that. Indeed I understand the government have allocated the pretty big sum of £80 billion over the next four years solely for regional development. The battle, as far Mr Heseltine sees it, is to encourage the London Whitehall mandarins to let go of their considerable centralised power.
It is thought a maliciously coded computer virus spread through banking and broadcasting networks in South Korea this morning, causing them to fail. Not unnaturally everyone jumped to the conclusion it must be North Korea. Amazingly that story was breaking just as a discussion was taking place on Today about an advisary Nato manual just published on how to respond to cyber attacks in accordance with international law. It says you must be proportional in your actions and only use protective force. You would not be justified for example in launching a counter cyber attack on a power network to take down military capability if that affected hospitals also.
Another item on the law was broadcast at the end of the programme. A BBC reporter was in the delta region of Gharibya in Egypt where mobile phone footage shows there has recently been a lynching of two, probably petty, criminals. The villagers were not ashamed. They said the rule of law in their area had completely broken down. Their lives are in chaos. If criminals are running amok amongst them, with no police to be seen, they have a right to take retaliatory action. I do feel a government has to govern for all the people. Once the respect for human life goes there is, in my opinion, little point.
Jim Muir on the tranmission before 7am was saying from Bagdad that Iraq has been through a terrible time over the last 10 years. There are still 250,000 displaced people living in shanty camps who do not feel safe going back home because of sectarian conflict. There is an effective civil war. The Kurds have pulled out of government and the Sunnis are in open revolt against the ruling Shia within it. One commentator suggested that a temporary partition of the country might be best whilst it gets back on it’s feet. If the warring politicians are ready to move forward their people will pay them back multifold. The economic potential is huge with the scale of oil extraction to double in the next five years. What a pity it all is.
I picked up from a news report that Robert Mugabe, a Catholic, went to Pope Francis’ inauroration in Rome yesterday. He shoudn’t have done due to a ban against him entering the EU being in place. However no physical harm came to anyone from him being obdurate. I suspect people thought that if he is determined to act illegally, in this instance you might as well let him get on with it.
Colm Murphy and Seamus Daly have today been found liable in a civl action retrial for the Omagh bombing in 1998. The judge said the evidence against them was overwhelming. I mention the bombing in Chapter 7 of my book.
Today’s FT reports that Turkey has reached a ceasefire with the Kurdistan Worker’s Party (PKK) who have been fighting for independence within the Turkish state for 30 years. Peace talks are now in prospect. Kurdistan, where there are large gas and oilfields, straddles eastern Turkey, northern Iraq and Syria, and north eastern Iran. The piece says that Turkish businesses have strong interests in northern Iraq and that alliances in the region are very much in a state of flux at the moment. You could argue, in a lesser way, that similar tensions are currently occuring between Russia and the EU all because of little old Cyprus.
An article on the same page analyses that Mr Obama’s strategy on his visit to Israel will be to become friends with the public there. If he can do that the idea is they will put a bit of home pressure on the Israeli premier to act flexibly in the region’s difficulties.
A Russian lawyer authored a piece in the paper arguing that all interested parties should be involved in a solution for Cyprus. That doesn’t seem too unreasonable to me with the amount of Russian Cypriot deposits involved, variously estimated to be between a third and a half of the total in value, irrespective of how they got there. He suggests the UK and Russia should stand up to German bullying.
The Queen visited Baker Street tube station today with the Duke of Edinburgh and the Duchess of Cambridge to commemorate 150 years of the underground system. It is her first proper outing since going down with her recent stomach bug. I listened to Peter Hunt remark on PM this afternoon that the Queen had been heard to say the doctors didn’t work out what had been wrong with her. I do not believe Peter would have said that unless the Palace were happy for him to do so.
21st March 2013
I am going abroad on holiday at the end of next week and needed to renew my passport for it. I left that a bit late so used the Post Office’s check and send service which is quicker. It would be delivered by post for which a signature is required. Over the weekend I received an automated phone message that the Post Office registered courier had tried to deliver on Saturday morning without suceess. I had been out for an hour down at the supermarket. I was asked to accept a new booking for yesterday between 9am and 3pm which I did. That should have been fine for me. I normally go out at 5pm for an hour and a half on Wednesdays but the times given would not clash (as it happened, by chance on Tuesday afternoon my son changed our normal arrangement to a different day: without that, as you might conclude yourself, I am sure my package would have arrived when I was out). Then I remembered at 12 noon yesterday that I had not put a note on the door to tell the courier I would be in my garden office and how to find it. I put one there and rang to check the position. The tracking number was looked up and their system told them no delivery had yet been attempted. With no sign of anybody by 3pm I rang again. I was told it was the wrong expiry time, I should have been informed 5pm. Nothing by then either. This time the girl rang the courier. The lady said she was running late and was now anticipating 7pm. At 6.45pm I popped up the road to drop something into a neighbour. Knowing how these things work though, when I saw a car parked with it’s sidelights on a bit further up the lane I decided to walk over to it. It was indeed the courier lady with my passport. She said she couldn’t find my house in the dark. She didn’t want to drive down so we walked back for my indentity verification together. In that short time she appeared to be alleging I, or the world, was messing her about in some way. I pointed out she was at least two hours late. I raised my voice with her. The Gang do not like you doing that, worrying people. With my new passport now safely at home I went back to quickly complete my visit at my neighbour’s. On the way back, and just as the passport courier was driving off, I noticed the lady next door was sitting outside on her doorstep, appreciating the cold, dark, dank air no doubt.
It is plain from what Mr Obama has said today that he is looking for peace between Israel and Palestine. However he will not do it on his own. What raises my heart therefore is a video clip I saw yesterday of Mr Netanyahu walking across an airfield tarmac with him. Mr Obama had taken his jacket off. Mr Netanyahu had his on. As they walked Mr Natanyahu took his off too, to show solidarity I feel with his companion. That’s the way.
When I was listening to his Budget speech yeserday I heard Mr Osborne say that 9000 former with profits policyholders over 60 with the Equitable Life insurance company, started before 1992, are to receive ex-gratia payments from the government of £5000 each. Mr Osborne made the point that the government is under no obligation to transfer those funds. It will happen because it is the right thing to do. I write about the fall of Equitable Life in chapter 6 of my book.
The Disaster’s Emergency Committee, representing 14 charities, has launched an appeal this morning to raise funds for humanitarian relief in Syria. There was a lady on Today this morning saying that four million people within Syria have been affected by the war with 1 million refugees fleeing the country.
On the news it was said the computer virus attack in South Korea affecting 32,000 machines has been traced to a single computer or server registered in China. However it doesn’t mean apparently that someone in North Korea wasn’t using the IP address as a front.
A Russian contact of Vladimir Putin was on the programme, again saying they would like to be included in talks with the EU to help out Cyprus. From the interview it seems Russia wishes to have some control over all those opaque funds that have fled their country to the island.
The transmission also gave prominence to the story that between the 1950’s and the 1970’s the Australian State carried out a policy of forced adoption of children from women, unmarried mothers and the like, they considered unsuitable to bring up their own kith and kin. Babies were removed from them at birth. Another example, in my view, of what happens to the culture of a society when the American Gang is strong at the top of it. Australian prime minister, Julia Gillard, has given a heartfelt apology today to all the women affected.
22nd March 2013
The Cypriot situation is extremely complex. You can look at it many ways. In essence I feel the country has got itself into a right pickle and now it must decide what it wants to do. Setting itself up as an offshore banking centre for Russian money within the eurozone was not a particularly smart thing to do. Borrowing more money from Russia will be no good. It can’t even pay off the debt it currently has. There has been talk of a whip round of kind hearted people to create a Solidarity Fund. Surely that is pie in the sky for the amount of money required. Their political leaders are going to have to make some very tough decisions, on behalf of them all. When that has happened in discussions with the eurozone, what they decided must be respected. We will all have to be as understanding with them as we can.
I see the Grand Master of the masonic United Grand Lodge of England had what has been described as a mild heart attack on Monday.
I believe our Royal Family are targeted by Organised Crime. When the car carrying the Prince of Wales and the Duchess of Cornwall was approching Canterbury Cathedral yesterday for the new archbishop’s enthroanment, a 46 year old man from Whitstable ran at it. He was arrested on suspicion of a breach of the peace. In the Magistates Court today he was bound over for a year, having to pay a fine of £100 if he misbehaves himself during that time. When arrested he was wearing a tee shirt which said, ‘I’m afraid and therefore unquestionably disobenient’.
From a couple of things I have heard over the last few days it seems Russia thinks there are three global powers in our world, it, China and America. Evevyone else, including the EU, have to buckle down to a certain extent. I feel that is a bit big headed but there you are. Anyway I see that the European Commission president, Jose Manuel, is in Russia at the moment. No doubt he is speaking to them on the Cypriot situation.
A BBC webpage reports this morning that 50,000 households in Northern Ireland are currently without power due to stong winds and snow. According to the forceast, and from the Met Office radar, anyone in the south west, Wales, the Midlands, the north and Scotland are in for a pretty torrid time over the next few hours.
Something Russia and Europe might like to bear in mind is that if you are on the same side you can get things done. I see that squaring the circle of future use for the Olympic stadium has finally been achieved. West Ham will become anchor tenants paying an annual rent of £2 million. They will now also pay £15 million of the building’s up to £190 million conversion costs. The government will contribute £60 million. To accommodate the club retractable seating is to be provided over the running track so their fans will be nearer the players and the roof will also be extended to give te crowd more protection from the elements. The football side will start playing there for the 2016 season.
After his meeting with Palestian president Mahmoud Abbas in Ramallah yesterday President Obama urged Mr Abbas not to set preconditions for any future talks that might take place with the Israelis, whilst also clearly saying that settlement building by Israel is not an appropriate activity whilst trying to find peace. He said both sides had to push through those blocks to clear thinking which will inevitably be present after all the difficult years.
In 2010 the previous friends Israel and Turkey fell out in a big way when Israeli special forces landed on one of a group of six ships in international waters, partly organised by a Turkish group. They were apparently taking humanitarian relief to Palestinians in Gaza against an Israeli naval blockade. Nine people on board were killed. When he left for Jordan this afternoon Mr Obama revealed that Mr Netanyahu had just spoken to Mr Erdogan on the phone apologising for any errors in the operation. Mr Erdogan accepted and Israel will now compensate the families of the deceased. Following that, I would say, the extradition of the man fron Turkish Cyprus, which I diarised on 16th March 2013, had nothing to do with the troubles of the island’s banks going on at the same time.
It has been on the news this afternoon that the Sellafield nuclear processing plant has been shut down to allow employees to get home early during the bad weather. A likely story (I heard at 5.30pm that it was back online and working normally).
There had been a bit of chatter about the Vatican being struck by lightening but I had not realised it was on the day the pope announced his resignation. This afternoon, with their parliament deciding the future course of their country, Cyrus is being lashed by a sandstorm and high winds.
Human beings are amazing. If there is a niche to be filled somewhere, in a free liberal society some enterprising person will come along and occupy it. Before 7am this morning the BBC’s New York correspondent, Matt Wells, reported from Rochester, New York Sate. A lady there has set up a business providing hour long sessions costing £40 for men snuggling women. In the boudoir the client is allowed to touch his companion’s body parts she has not previously covered with underclothes. That of course means no sexual connotations and consquently can be openly talked about on national radio. The lady is running a viable business which her girls enjoy. The sessions are all about trust. Not that difficult I suppose when you start with clearly spoken rules. What the rest of us need to get the hang of I feel is to mange those invisible unspoken boundaries when dealing with others, verbally and physically, in our everyday lives.
Whether this is Gang related or not I do not know but I suspect it maybe. Smoking among the young has been on a downward trend for years but there was a lady from Cancer Research UK on Today this morning expressing concern that there was a spike in 11-15 year olds starting the habit in 2011, to 200,000. No one knows why.
After listening to Yesterday in Parliament during the tramsmission it does appear that the Concervative Party leadership are not functioning on all four cylinders at the moment. The Shadow Chancellor, Ed Balls, provided a bit of a mauling in the chamber on the details of the Budget announced mortgage assistance scheme. Even after their budget problems last year it seems full provisions had not been worked out beforehand. Of couse that maybe down to Treasury officials more than anyone else but, even so, it is the politicians who are in charge.
I have written a few times about Sudan recently, lastly on 27th February 2013. There was another report from Mike Thomson on this morning’s programme. The place is in a mess. It’s president is indicted for war crimes and his regime is subject to US sanctions. It only keeps in power due to harsh repression and people are at the end of their tethers. One opposing lady said she had now passed through the wall of fear. She does not care anymore. It seems possible the government might fall before the end of the year. In that case a civil war is on the cards.
For his first visit abroad the Chinese premier has chosen to visit Russia, a feather in their cap. However in the discussion on the broadcast it was thought, in today’s world, China is more important to Russia than vice versa. Next Xi Jinping is off to South Africa, one of the five Bric nations, also including Brazil and India. It was said both Russia and China would like to beef up their group to weigh against American influence.
It hasn’t been given too much attention by the BBC today but Nick Clegg has made a speech that immigrants from high risk countries might be made to pay a security bond of over £1000 when they arrive in this country. It would be paid back on departure. I suspect timing of the idea was to get people thinking about something new, not nit picking the provisions of the budget.
23rd March 2013
On Thursday the BBC had a day when school children were staff reporters for the day. Amongst other things they produced webpages under the title of News School Report. One of those was about 15 year old Malala Yousafzai and what an inspiration she has been for others of her age throughout the world. I had not realised it but Malala’s diary which she originally produced for the BBC’s Urdu service has been translated and is now available to read on their main News website.
Another BBC department you do not hear much about is their worldwide media monitoring service, covering over 100 languages, based in Caversham in Berkshire. That received a prime spot during the week when it was reporting the reactions of Russian media to the Cyprus financial crisis.
Susan Watts had a report on Newsnight on Thursday evening about the use of data in policing. Kent Police are conducting a trial analysing their crime data to identify physical hotspots, for burglaries say, and then get police officers out on the beat to deter future occurances. Susan interviewed the chief constable and also the ACPO lead on public safety, Ian Learmonth, in his office. He was saying the success of their new policy will be difficult to measure. It may look obscure to connect a quiet neighbourhood with what they are doing. However he asks people to hold their nerve. No one can be against a lack of crime. During the piece we were shown a bird’s eye view of Mr Learmonth’s office taken I think from an unobtrusive fixed camera at the top of the wall. That, I imagine, is looked upon as protection for him when he is there and protection for the office when he is not.
On of President Assad’s most prominent supporters, 84 year old Sunni cleric Sheikh Mohammed al-Buti, was killed by a bomb at his Damascus mosque on Thursday with over 40 others. Jim Muir says it is the single most psychologically damaging act to have happened to the regime in the two years of the civil war. Mr Buti appeared on Syrian television a lot I think and their evening news bulletin ran for over three hours to cover the event with the newsreaders and interviewees visibly shaken. The attack happened a few hours after it was announced that the UN Syrian representative had asked the Secretary General to carry out a specialised, independent and neutral technical investigation into whether chemical waepns had been used in the Syrian region of Khan al-Assal last Tuesday killing at least 25 people. One thing on which you can totally rely is that if you do something the Gang do not like they will let you know.
It seems to me that if you run an organistaion out here in the real world you do have to be responsible for it’s actions. As reported in the following day’s FT, Barclays announced on Wednesday that it’s head of investment banking received £18 million in cash this week through selling Barclay’s shares he had been awarded under old bonus arrangements. Other individual executives got shares worth up to £5.6 million each. Through legal obligation there was nothing the bank could do about those payments. However I do feel the new chief executive should have used his authority to see that the announcement was not made when everyone in the finance world was listening to the Budget details.
I have heard it said that both Ireland and Denmark have a press regulataion system vey similar, if not identical, to the one started by our politicans last week. In practice both work very well. That paper however also reports on the deep unease in the newspaper industry on our proposed post Leveson regime. It appears highly unlikely they will cooperate. I feel that would be a shame. No one is forcing them to join the scheme and no one will force them to stay if they do not like it. I cannot really see therefore what all the fuss is about. If there is an award of exemplary damages to an organisation which isn’t in, and the industry is unhappy about that, they can appeal to Europe under the Human Rights Act. If they refuse to give it a try, no doubt with some joining and some not, informed members of the public are likely to question whether there is some form of overall hidden agenda in play which they are not telling us about.
I am pleased I live in Britain and not America where people do have a habit of shooting each other. That issue reports the Democratically governed state of Colorado has just introduced tougher gun laws within it’s jurisdiction. The day before they came into effect the state’s prisoner govenor answered a knock at his front door. He was shot dead.
The paper tells me that when in Israel President Obama indicated he wanted to listen a bit before he talked in specific terms about peace. I think that is the correct way forward. From my observations I would say Mr Obama will not move until he believes the time is right. I truly hope that time will come.
There is a contributor in that edition suggesting, on the global we are all in this together theme, that academics should author their papers with peers in other countries if they can. The synergy provided by different cultures, attitudes and ways of looking at the world would almost undoubedly provide better results.
24th March 2013
The gloves are really off as far as the weather is concerned. We are told the current cold snap could last until the end of March. With the driving wind, snow drifts are accumulating up to 15 foot high according to the Daily Mail. At least the Gang can’t control the movement of the planets. We are moving inexorably into summer. The warm weather will come.
One weather story related by a BBC webpage this morning is about a middle aged couple who got trapped in their car on a B road near Bala Lake in Gwynedd. The snow drifts were so bad the rescue services had to walk in to accompany them from the scene. The pair had followed directions of a sat nav which the authorities said was silly. The indication for me that they are probably fearful Gang helpers is that they presumably had charged mobile phones with them to call for help and were well prepared for their night in the car. The fact remains however that they relied on kind hearted, untainted professioal people to help them. If we were all paranoid that would not have happened. Had they not gone on their journey, or kept to the main road, I doubt they would have come to any Gang harm.
The services are not putting their staff at risk following the discovery, by a staff member, of Boris Berezovsky’s body in the bath at his Ascot home yesterday afternoon. The corpse remains in place whilst police with expertise in contamination by chemical, biological and nuclear materials investigate the scene. I doubt if it will be shown that Mr Berezovsky was murdered. However I think it likely he was. I note he was found in the same place as Gareth Williams in 2010 about whom I write about in chapter 10 of my book.
Yesterday I wrote that I am pleased I do not live in America. I am also happy not to be a Russian national. It is only men from that nation who seem to getting a habit for coming to the UK for the purpose of killing fellow countrymen they do not like. Alexander Litvinenko suffered a horrible death after drinking tea laced with radioactive polonium-210 in the lounge of a London hotel in 2006. Last summer a Russian banker was gunned down outside his home in London’s Docklands in an assassination attempt. Fortunately he survived. Mr Putin should do something about it.
As far as I know there was no Russian connection in the murder of Roberto Calvi found hanging under Blackfriars Bridge in London in 1982. He was a banker for the Vatican and it is suspected he was killed in retaliation for stealing millions of pounds from somebody which he had laundered on behalf of the mafia. In 1991 the underworld suggested he was killed by Francesco Di Carlo a mafia godfather who had lived in England since the 1970’s, running away from the Sicilian police. The Guardian however spoke to Mr Di Carlo in May 2012 at his then Italian home. He said it was impossible for him to have done it. He was in a British prison at the time, a place he colloquially called a university. He said he knew who carried out the deed but they would never be brought to justice as they are being protected by the Italian state through the P2 masonic lodge. To me however the killing seems very much like a public warning the American Gang are prone to make, as they did in Ascot I feel yesterday afternoon.
Mr Di Carlo told the paper the Italian lodge is made up of politicians, bank presidents, military and security officials. He said he had decided to speak to the Guardian because he is fed up with them all. He is happy with his new, quiet existence. In his grandfather’s day the mafia worked to a set of moral rules. They did not kill journalists, women, children or innocents. You would not kill a policeman if he was honestly trying to do his job. In his view it was illegal drugs that corrupted the organisation. It gave some individuals too much money and too much power. Everyone started to forget about the true meaning of life itself.
A YouGov poll was published at the beginning of February saying that 74% of respondents believed the government should implement the Leveson proposals in full. Since last weekend however I image there have been masses of column inches in the press saying what a terrible step the new regime will be. On Any Questions on Friday evening Jonathan Dimbleby asked the audience for a show of hands on the subject. 75% said they thought the press should not be externally regulated in any way.
The BBC report this afternoon that the Syrian opposition leader has resigned by a posting on his Facebook page. He was seen as a respected unifying figure so that is a setback. It seems possible he felt he was being pushed in directions he did not want to go. He says he will continue to work for peace but with a freedom that cannot be had in an official institution.
After talks on Friday with King Abdullah President Obama went on his own to the Petra ruins in Jordan yesterday before returning home. Mark Mardell writes an intersting reflective blog about his trip on the BBC website. He suggests, for me, that we should not expect too much of the President. He will do what he can but he is just one piece in a pretty large jigsaw of key players who should want to bring about a better world for everybody who lives here. It has got to be a team effort. He cannot do it all on his own. The time is not yet right for him to show his hand. Everybody has got to start pushing in the same direction. With goodwill on all sides they will get there.
I see from the Daily Express of 8th February that, due to the cold weather, gas prices had doubled in the previous two weeks to 98 pence per therm for next day delivery. The market was already edgy therefore when on Friday morning one of our three gas supply pipelines from Europe broke down. Prices surged to 150 pence a therm. They dropped back to 100 pence when the water pump breakdown was corrected in the afternoon. At the moment our on-land gas storage facilities are at 10% of capacity. Things will improve next week when two boat cargoes of liquidfied natural gas are due. The story was on the 8.10 slot on the Today programme yesterday.
The market fear shown there seems to me to uncannily mirror our financial crisis. No big ideas but gas traders sense, with the help of a few well chosen Gang words I suspect, that things could go badly pear shaped. Their unease comes directly through in the market price. If they understood how it works I do feel it would make it better for them.
After Friday’s piece on snuggling the programme highlighted the practice of hiring a pretend girlfiend, for your Facebook page and the like, for $250 per month. A 23 year old lady from California explained all about it. She was saying that in the States it is really starting to take off. I am not sure whether to marvel or recoil. It is quite harmless I suppose.