Diary Extracts 24th – 30th December 2012

24th December 2012

Egypt’s two stage election process has now been completed and the new constitution approved.  Fewer than a third of eligible voters participated this time in comparison with 50% for the presidential outcome.  In this turnout 64% said yes to Mr Morsi’s proposed changes.

Today’s FT reports that some things are better in Gaza following the ceasefire but not a lot.  Politically things are a bit stuck as the Egyptian middlemen between Hamas and Israel are preoccupied with their own internal conflicts at the momemt.  The suggestion is made though that, as the elected force in the territory, Hamas sould be doing more to move things forward.

The same edition has a nice quote from an American Republican politician referring to the present state of his party.  He told the paper that one definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result this time.

At 6am this morning four volunteer firemen attended a call to a group of houses at a town in New York State bordering Lake Ontario, called Webster.  It was a trap and they were shot at with two being killed and two injured.  The houses burnt fiercely.  The 62 year old gunman resident of one of the houses appears to have shot himself dead after committing his murders.

 

26th December 2012

I talk about Charlotte Blackman, and how she was killed in a cliff face collapse in Dorset in July 2012, at the end of Chapter 6 of my book.  This morning the British Geological Survey has issued a warning to Christmas holiday walkers about the stability of cliff edges and sides in south west England in view of the current wet weather.  The BBC webpage report says the organisation is worried that people should not be taking any unnecessary risks.

On Christmas Day morning a car which was driving along the M6 in Staffordshire, swerved and turned over.  No other vehicles were involved apparently.  It seems possible the driver met an unexpected driving hazard such as a small animal running out in front of her.  Two children and a woman in the car were killed.  The children’s mother, the driver of the vehicle, survived with minor injuries.

Gillian Tett was writing about cyber-hackers and terrorists in last Saturday’s FT Magazine following the power breakdowns after hurricane Sandy.  The point she made was that in modern day society we are all extremely vunerable to large scale loss of public service through malfunctioning equipment.  Gillian says that in America big business can appear quite complacent about the threat, although in reality she feels it is probably as much about distrust of giving away some of your corporate secrets to others as anything else.  The Gang are very good at the game of divide and rule in my opinion.

Today’s news reports that the commander of Syria’s military police has defected and fled to Turkey.

Following on from my dead pidgeon diary note of 16th December 2012 there was a trustee of Bletchley Park on Today this morning saying the Canadian gentleman hasn’t cracked the code at all.  Apparently GCHQ are also of that view.

 

27th December 2012

A storm system has been moving up over America during the last 24 hours causing 34 tornadoes in southern States.  18 inches of snow is expected in New York state and Maine later.  Little Rock, Arkansas has seen it’s first snow in 83 years and up to 200,000 people are without power.  Six fatalities due to the weather have so far been reported.

 

29th December 2012

I was pleased to see that Met Police commissioner Bernard Hogan-Howe has been given a knighthood in the New Year Honours.  I do feel we should be supporting organisation leaders who appear to be performing adequately.  Knowing the importance of a structured, orderly society I expect even Andrew Mitchell will not have any strong objections.

Barack Obama has expressed cautious optimism that American politicians can sort out a compromise on the economic fiscal cliff negotiations before Monday’s deadline.  I heard a newsclip this morning of him saying that it would be a pretty terrible example of dysfunction if the American domestic economy, and the world economy, are disadvantaged simply because politicians in Congress can’t do their jobs.

In the news interegnum period between Christmas and the New Year the Today programme has daily guest editors who air subjects of interest to them.  This morning it was Dame Ann Leslie.  There was a discussion about religious faith and the existence of God.  My two penny worth on the subject is that I do think it likely there is a weak force for good in the universe which, as humand beings, we will never be able to understand.  We do however see it’s effect quite a lot.  We call it chance.  We are absolutely fascinated by that, as our predilection for gambling shows.   Whether we interpret the field as the hand of God or not, it seems to me, is a matter of personal choice and preference.  However, if my hunch is right, something I am absolutely certain about is that the energy is not omnipotent.  As humans have freedom of thought and action it would, in my view, be silly to believe anything else. We should look to ourselves to sort out our problems here on earth and not expect some form of supernatural force to do it for us.  On a personal level all we can do I think is recognise that everyone gets lucky breaks sometimes.  When they do come our way we should maximise them to their most beneficial effect.

Dame Ann is a journalist of long standing having reported from some 70 countries over her career.  A subject that attracts her is corruption which can be defined as the misuse of public power for private benefit.  In a personal piece this morning she highlighted Denmark, Finland and New Zealand as being relatively free from corruption and Belgium, France and the European Commission as being quite involved with it.  She said that it is endemic in Nigeria amongst police, politicians and officials.  She suggests Nigeria has the most ingenious fraudsters on earth.  That makes me think of the unwanted emails from the country I still receive in my Inbox on a regular basis.  She said it is estimated that business costs in Russia are inflated by 40% due to the necessity to make corrupt payments.  And that £318 billion a year, a third of their GDP, is paid annually in bribes.  She singles out Israel and Palestine as both being corrupt places.  Apparantly the membership of Hamas contains 800 millionaires.  Her conclusion is that corruption taints and destroys economies, civil societies and, ultimately, democracies themselves.  We have been warned.

Something else Dame Ann picked up on was what a funny lot we are.  School children being shot dead in America or a young lady gang raped for an hour on a bus in India after which she dies, affects us greatly.  Yet the continuing violence and deaths of many innocent Muslim civilians in Pakistan and Afghanistan seem to pass us by.  She feels it is a form of racism.  For me though it is an illustration of what emotional beings we are.  For us to harness that strength of feeling in thoughtful ways for good, as I suggest in the letter in appendix 11/4 of my book, is the trick I believe.

Thursday’s guest editor on Today was the scientist Sir Paul Nurse.  A story he wished to promote was on the MMR debate from the late 1990’s.  At that time the doctor Andrew Wakefield produced a research paper suggesting that the three part innoculation of young children to protect them against measels, mumps and rubella, had dangerous side effects.  The claim however was later shown to be untrue and Mr Wakefield was finally disqualified as a doctor in May 2010.  Intitially however the MMR vacination rates of children dropped from nearly 100% to 80%.  To promote his case Mr Wakefield did not mind genuine, concerned Mums  expressing their fears to the media.  And therein, says Mr Nurse, lies the rub.  Mr Wakefield’s evidence was always suspect but journalists, obliged to broadcast both sides of the argument, allowed the emotional of his thesis to take hold.  Scientists however tend to be reserved, cautious and boring.  Their language was low key  and fair minded.  They lost out because they were not prepared to call a spade a spade.  The Gang story all over.  We got there in the end but meanwhile little children suffered.

On that programme was an interview with George Osborne on the government providing support for science.  Science of course is all about pragmatically following the evidence of your results.  As far as policy making in government is concerned though Mr Osborne said he thought he had to appeal as much to his public’s hearts as their heads.  As long as his rational judgement of long term benefit for the country remains sound I have no problem with that.  Nevertheless I do feel he should always be prepared to argue through the common sense of his decisions so we can make an assessment of his reasoning.

There was a Radio 4 programme on at lunchtime where BBC correspodents looked forward to the year ahead.  Diplomatic correspodent James Robbins said he thought the prospects for an Arab-Israeli peace settlement would fade in 2013.

The Halifax reported on Thursday that this year house prices in Southend in Essex have risen by 15%.  However an estate agent in the town said he was surprised by their finding.  His experience was that buyers and sellers had been in equilibrium meaning that prices had been stable.

The BBC webpage notes today that a woman was seen running away after a man operating a printing business was pushed in front a train in New York, killing him.  The report says she has made a statement implicating herself.  Similarly a homeless man has been charged with murder after the same thing happened at the beginning of the month in the city.

A plane without any passengers on board flying in from the Czech Republic overshot the runway at Moscow airport today killing at least four of the crew.  The owner of the private airline concerned is Alexander Lebedev, whose family owns the London Evening Staandard and The Independent group of newspapers.

 

30th December 2012

After the quietness of the Christmas break things are back to normal with a bang today, partly no doubt to fill up the Sunday papers.

The leaders of Newcastle, Liverpool and Sheffield councils have written a letter published in today’s Observer saying that public sector spending cuts being pushed through by the Government risk unrest on the streets and the break-up of civil society.  The coalition say they act fairly towards all councils.

Keith Vaz, Labour chairman of the Home Affairs Committee, chose the Sunday Express to air his views on the current standing of the police in our society.  With depth of thought in my view he has pointed out that 26 out of 43 police forces do not currently have permanent chief constables; that both plebgate and Hillsborough show the police are able to act well below the standards expected of them; yet 90% of rank and file officers feel undervalued and nearly half say they would like to leave their jobs.  Mr Vaz calls that a dangerous cocktail.  He asks for cool heads, strong leadership and meaningful discussions between all stakeholders concerned.  He suggets a Royal Commission to look into how we should be policed in the 21st century might be a good idea.

In my view Labour leaders have come into a certain amount of current Gang knowledge recently as a result of an email I sent to one of their number on 30th November 2012.

Following on from that I feel David Cameron gave quite a political New Year’s video message today emphasising the state of the country inherited by the coalition in 2010.  He said that 2012 has been a tough year but, being realistic and optimistic, he believes we are now moving in the right direction.

I recall before he became prime minister Mr Cameron said he wanted to do away with the Punch and Judy aspect of the weekly PMQ’s in the Commons.  That however has proved impossible to achieve due to, I think, the continuous adversarily pressures placed on our politicians by those hidden forces around us all.  In that case the parties might just as well play the game imposed on them.  The crucial thing though of course is that they must never lose sight of the bigger picture.  They must ensure they represent our best interests at all times, even whilst they disagree on the details.

We are short of doctors in this country and 36% come from overseas.  Yet 63% of all doctors suspended or struck off originate from abroad.  The General Medical Council say they recognise the problem and will do something about it such as introducing additional UK based training for new arrivals.

Two sets of killings have taken place in Pakistan in the last 24 hours.  One is the assassinations of 20 checkpoint soldiers near Pershaw who were captured in an assault by 200 armed Taliban last Thursday.  The second is a bomb attack killing at least 19 in a bus convoy taking pilgrims to Iran with which Pakistan shares it’s south west border.  Last month a suicide bomber killed 23 Muslims as they were going to a mosque in Rawalpindi.

Against those 60 lives the death of the raped medical student across Pakistan’s opposite border in India has created an immense amount of quite understandable anger in that country’s capital, Delhi, where she lived.  Both the head of the ruling Congress Party, Sonia Ghandi, and the prime minister, Manmohan Singh, have appealed for public calm.  Delhi has been saturated with riot police to prevent trouble.  However, as far as I am aware, all protests have been entirely peaceful.

The situation reminds me of what happened here just after the shooting dead by police of Raoul Moat in July 2010 as I relate in Chapter 5 of my book.  I heard Mr Cameron just after, speak in the Commons as though he was worried the public would react extremely negatively to what had happened.  I wrote to him on  19th July 2010 asking him to listen to a recording I had heard of a mature lady member of the public who felt nothing but compassion for Mr Moat.

Although it did nor occur to me then I now think Mr Cameron might have felt a certain amount of guilt about how our public services had mishandled the situation.  Perhaps that worried him to the extent he feared for the maintenance of quiet public order.

It seems likely to me that guilt might also be a major factor in India now.  This time though I suspect the worry arises because India’s political leaders know they are as much interested in lining their own pockets as serving the people who vote for them.  I imagine a perception like that could phase the best of us.  Thet problem though is easy to remedy in my opinion as the solution is in the politician’s own hands.  Mr Cameron’s difficulty was much more tricky.

President Obama visited Dresden in 2009 and prayed for peace with Angela Merkel in a rebuilt church  which had been destroyed in the second world war.  The German chancellor asked that the press should take no photos of them doing that.  However, as reported on the Radio 4 Sunday Programme this morning, her attitude to melding her religous faith into public life seems to have changed.  Over the last month she has started openly saying how important her protestant religion is to her, directing the path of her whole life.  Something I hadn’t realised is that Mrs Merkel is fluent in both Russian and English.

David Gardner’s article in Friday’s FT goes through all the potential pitfalls in the Middle East which could trip the world up in the next twelve months or so.  He concludes by asking for strategic clarity and an underpinning of universal values in dealing with all the problems, even if those values cannot always be uniform for all involved.