The resignation of Steven Purcell

Well, well, well…. Who would have thought it?

Steven Purcell, leader of Glasgow City Council and rising star of the Scottish Labour Party has resigned from both his position as Leader of the Council and as a Councillor.

The importance of the events of last week cannot be over estimated. This is a huge issue which is likely to continue shaking Scottish politics for months to come.

Let's recap:

Late at night on Monday 1^st March, it became apparent that The Herald had a scoop: Stephen Purcell was going to resign from his post as Leader. This appeared on Tuesday’s edition of The Herald. The reason, we were told at the time, was stress and exhaustion as reported by the BBC News.

On the topic on the stress of high ranking public officials and politicians I side with this view. Or if you can’t stand the heat, get out of the kitchen.

Except of course, that this has nothing to do with “stress and exhaustion”.

And there are two reasons to be sure of that:

First, we have the fact that Mr Purcell felt necessary to use the services of Peter Watson, Scotland’s top libel lawyer.

Second, Mr Purcell is employing Jack Irvine, allegedly Scotland’s answer to Max Clifford. Mr Irvine, a former editor of The Sun, is a PR professional whose job is to control media coverage of a story in order to protect his client’s interests.

As a long-suffering Glasgow council-tax payer, I hope I am not paying for any of this.

If that was not bad enough, we have the bizarre coverage by the Scottish media.

First, the BBC’s blog Blether with Brian was heavily “moderated” from the start.

From the very start, other online media outlets pulled the plug on online comments.

Under the disguise of well-wishing choreography, the papers hint that more is to come.

Speculation on Wednesday was rife as to the potential causes for Mr Purcell’s sudden departure and his using of the country’s top libel solicitor and top spin doctor. The Scotsman and The Herald continued to run with the story. Even the SSY wrote about it.

On Wednesday afternoon, it is made public that Mr Purcell had checked in at a re-hab clinic in the Borders.

On Thursday, The Scotsman reveals what everyone suspected but dare not write.

And on Friday, when everyone is in agreement that the Sunday newspapers are going to have the full story, it is made public that Mr Purcell has now resigned as a councillor.

In the meantime, the Labour party appears very quiet.

Whilst messages of goodwill and recovery have been made, political support for Mr Purcell is not existent within the ranks of the party.

This, by a long way, is not over: Sunday will only be the start. 
As another Scottish Labour failure said not so long ago: bring it on!

Update Saturday 6 March 2115h:
Now Mr Purcell has left the country.
The Daily Record. 

Can't wait for the newspapers tomorrow -if they are allowed or have the balls to print anything.  BBC Scotland's coverage of the most high profile political story since the Scottish elections has been a disgrace and further evidence of its Scottish Labour bias. Apparently Purcell's shocking resignation does not merit being included under the Scottish Politics section.

Another viewpoints worth reading here and here.
A somewhat different take from a Ranting Rab (no relation).

If Joan McAlpine was chief editor of The Herald, and if The Herald were not so biased towards Scottish Labour, then it would be worth buying it every day. Alas, we buy the Sunday Herald and that's enough. But will the SH have any substantial reporting about this story tomorrow? Paul Hutcheon, not for the first time, broke a top story, his sources must be very good. Does he have more to tell and will he be allowed to publish everything?

We shall wait and see.

When in a hole, stop digging

In the end, only four MPs will be prosecuted by the Police.

Full details of the story can be found at the BBC News website.

The extent of the immorality of these scumbags, the four that are being charged and the many that are getting away scot-free is beyond comprehension. But surely the top prize for conceit, the number one award for guilt-free theft has to go the the RH Jim Devine MP.

I almost choked on my fish and chips watching this interview in Channel 4.
The Labour member of parliament for Livingston admits to submitting false receipts. But wait, things can only get better: he did so on the advice of a Labour whip.

Under questioning by the C4 presenter, Mr Devine refuses to disclose the ientity of the Labour whip who alledgedly advised him to submit false receipts. I trust Mr Devine will not be as shy under interrogation by the Metropolitan Police.

But here is the interesting thing about Mr Devine's explanation: he claims he moved money around but did not benefit financially himself. So who did? Were there any bank transfers between Mr Devine's "communications" and "staffing" accounts and a bank account of a third party, let's say a Labour party bank account?

This is only the start.

Bring it on

In the end, it became an embarrassment.
After having the nation(s) worked up in a frenzy about the presence of Nick Griffin MEP, leader of the British National Party, in Question Time, it turns out that he is a political lightweight, a lame-duck panellist unwilling or unable to convey his views with any sincerity or even conviction. It was revealing in more than one way.

First, the decision to invite him to the program by the BBC.

It is understandable that many people were oppose to his appearance. It gives the BNP a platform to peddle their message of hatred and ignorant racism. However, whether we like it or not, the BNP has a number of councillors in England, and achieved 6% of the UK vote at the last European elections, resulting in two BNP MEPs being elected.
On that basis, the BBC did the right thing.

The lesson perhaps for militant anti-fascist campaigners is that we should not be afraid of giving people like the BNP a platform. Mr Griffin got challenged last night in a way he has not been challenged so far in his other BBC appearances on his own. By trying to prevent the BNP being invited to the BBC, the Left (whatever this means nowadays) gives ammunition to the sense of grievance and persecution that feeds the BNP at local, grassroots level.

Last night’s performance by Griffin was an embarrassment to his party and to himself.
There is nothing to be afraid of. Cambridge degrees are over-rated. Now, when are the Greens getting invited to Question Time?

What the anti-fascist movement and in general the Left, far-left or whatever we want to call it has to do is to challenge the BNP in local communities –and get elected representatives. It speaks volumes of the inability of the socialist/communists parties that the BNP can achieve 20% of the vote in some local communities, and even 6% at UK level, but the Left parties have no representation whatsoever, not even after a banking-induced crisis. And in Scotland, where the SSP managed to get 6 MSPs out of 135, they immolated themselves in typical Left fashion and now they have 1.

The performance
Nick Griffin lost his composure very quickly. He was unable to answer any question with any conviction or sincerity. When he was offered total judicial immunity by Jack Straw, Home Secretary, to explain his views on the Holocaust, he bottled it.

When it came to forced repatriation, something that is a key message of the BNP, he bottled it again.

Even when asked about what does he mean by “indigenous peoples”, he also crumbled, unable to muster any kind of coherent response. Well, I have no such qualms and I dare say that the “indigenous” peoples he means are white folk of British or Irish stock. Well, at least some progress is being made: now the Irish are in.

Throughout the programme, it appeared to me that he was just trying to explain what his party really stands for, and thus he failed to answer most questions. If I was a BNP supporter, I would be furious that such a precious opportunity has been wasted.

The others
Particularly, when the panel was nothing to write home about.
Bonnie Greer, admittedly someone I find slightly annoying, could not be bothered. She was like a car in second gear. I understand that for someone of mixed race sitting next to Mr Griffin must be quite repulsive but this should not be an excuse for ambivalence. That she managed to unnerve Mr Griffin saying so little and in such an half-arsed manner reveals how weak and feeble the BNP really is.

Jack Straw was in professional politico mode -a total turn-off. Failed to answer the question on immigration he was asked and failed to recognise that immigration is a problem for some communities, and that the Labour government has let these communities down by first failing to control immigration, failing to invest in these deprived areas, and failing to put a stop to the myths progagated by the BNP about immigrants’ benefits, rights and so on.

Baroness Varsi (I never thought I would see an Asian Tory peer, the world is changing really fast...) was also in professional politician mode. Her quote of “rights and responsibilities” made me cringe. Typical “compassionate Conservative” tone and discourse. How she can live amongst the Tories is beyond me.

Chris Humne for the Lib Dems was perhaps the most convincing (or least unconvincing) of the other panellist. He would have made a fine LibDem leader and I am not sure why he was not elected to the post.

The aftermath
In the aftermath of the debate, BNP supporters have come out in force and denounced the “lynching” or “witch hunt” to which Mr Griffin was a victim of.

And for what? For being given a rough time. For being challenged. Well, Blair was given a rough time too when he was called a war criminal and he put up with it and did not cry like a big blouse.
It just shows how feeble is the BNP threat that the scrutiny of a mediocre panel and amateurish audience is enough to send them home crying “foul”. It is a bit rich coming from the BNP to use words like mob or lynching –they irony seems to have been lost on them however.

Now he is demanding a repeat of the programme, and also a one-on-one debates with Jack Straw and also with Cameron. No less.

The problem is that Mr Griffin has already had a chance at the big time –and blew it. It did not make good television, and it did not show him up in a good light. Why asking for more punishment?

Because this is how the BNP thrives. By playing victim to a "far-left BBC conspiracy" (has he not read Mrs Flanders?) it is easier to go door-to-door in the deprived, working class neighbourhoods in England and point out how the establishment are protecting immigrants against the white English. The BNP will keep getting councillors elected, and probably will get another MEP next time. But that should not worry us too much. Are we naïve enough to think only 10% of the electorate in this country are racist?

BBC Links:

BBC News – Key extracts

BBC News – Mr Griffin complaints about a “lynch mob”

BBC News – voters’ reaction in Dagenham, London

BBC News – media reaction summary

BBC News - The BNP and the white working class

Best of the rest:

The Herald – 8m tune in,

The Times – writers’ review summary

The Independent – Outrage and not debate confronted Griffin, choked on publicity

The Daily Telegraph – his wife is right, the Italian models in the BNP’s leaflet

The Guardian – sympathy for the underdog, frontpage slideshow, facts,

The uselessness of foreign correspondents

Apart from Robert Fisk, that is.

Today it was the final straw: foreign journalists covering Spain are quite a useless lot. Do they spend their time teaching Spanish part-time to make ends meet?

I understand that news are provided for a British readership but to accept that argument after the news coverage today is to accept that readers of British broadsheets are as braindead as tabloid readers.

Of all the things that have happened in Spain in recent weeks, the only one that got significant coverage in the UK press was the decision by the Catalan parliament to abolish “happy hour” and “irresponsible” drink promotions.

The Independent

The Guardian

The Telegraph

BBC News

Note: I will await until The Times’ journo catches up.

What about?

+ The corruption cases involving the PP in Mallorca and Valencia.

+ The independence referendums in Catalonia

+ The arrests of Basque politicians whose only crime was to meet up.

+ The banking crisis

But no, our collection of rent-a-word ex-pats decide to write back to their editors about some minor legislation about drinking. Dumbing down indeed.

The lost decade

Sometimes I wonder why I blog when I enjoy more reading other people's bright and illuminating writing. Perhaps I should just post links to articles and blogs, like a policeman managing traffic at a busy intersection.

Over the last few months, Iain Macwhirter has written brilliant stuff for the Sunday Herald, particularly about the underlying causes of the financial crisis and the inability of the political class to confront the powerful financial services lobby, in particular the banks. He even seems to have stopped his partisan attacks against the SNP. Who knows, maybe one day Iain and other Herald journalists will see sense in Scotland becoming a normal state within the EU as opposed to remaining as an appendix of England…

This article about the imminent demise of the Labour party in the UK is poignant, coming from someone that used to be a party member while at University.

Sunday Herald

A few days ago, my father-in-law made the mistake of mentioning politics during our weekend visit for tea and biscuits. I went onto a rant about the lost decade and why Labour only has itself to blame for their forthcoming electoral disaster. I don’t think he will make such a blunder again and will stick to football and the weather from now on.

For the vast majority of working class Scots like my in-laws, a Tory government is synonymous with public service cuts, mass unemployment and the hated Poll Tax (in Scotland first). The Conservatives is “their” party. The party of the rich and wealthy. The party that will screw the working class living in (former) council houses. Labour is still, believe or not, the people’s party for the vast majority of working class Scots.

However, after 12 years of Labour rule –or was it New Labour- we can now assess what has been achieved. And, sadly for traditional Labour supporters, we know that things have not got much better.

If anything, things have got worse, and the current crisis will only exacerbate it.

Income inequality is now wider than 1997. People in higher incomes have done very well of Labour’s spell in power.

Poverty.org.uk

ONS [pdf, 800Kb]

IFS [ppt]

The working class have remained working for stagnant wages that prevented them from buying assets. These assets became more expensive as middle and higher earners accumulated financial assets and property, keeping them out of reach of lower income households.

Wealth distribution is now more unequal than it was in 1997.

Higher earners have accumulated a higher ownership of assets than ever before, namely property and financial assets thanks to the very generous tax breaks offered to them. Lower and lower-middle earners have not been able to buy assets, as prices keep escalating out of their reach. Thus the poor have stayed poor whilst the rich have become even more richer. The gap is now wider than it was in 1997. (Gini coefficient, ONS, wiki)

Hansard

WSWS

Social mobility is now more restricted than it was in 1997.

Access to tertiary education is now more expensive and difficult for families in lower incomes after the increase in tuition fees and the abolition of grants. Oxbridge and first tier Universities remain the preserve of privately educated, middle-class or wealthy families and any changes in access remain statistically non-significant.

Access to good state schools is now dependant on ability to buy property within schools catchment’s area, which is out of reach to any families in average incomes.

So Labour, the party that looks after everybody, the party that is on the side of the have-nots, and in favour of wealth redistribution has been a catastrophe for the very people it ought to have looked after.

It has been very good however to those in higher incomes who have been able to accumulate property (tax relief of interest), financial assets (tax gross up and relief on pension contributions at marginal rate, etc.)

And this is without mentioning the lies over the Iraq war, semi-privatisation of NHS, Post Office closures, etc, etc.

I am not advocating a vote for the Conservatives but anyone on average incomes who believes that Labour is going to be good for them needs to have a reality check. Sorry.

The only way is down for Obama

Everybody seems to have been taken by surprise with regards to the vitriol directed at the proposed health-care plan by the new US administration led by Barack Obama. Town halls have been hijacked by Republican activists and the “debate” has turned nasty. It has even evolved into an international conflict, with the British PM Gordon Brown twittering in support of the NHS. A loony Tory has joined the “debate” and spoiled the party for David Cameron, for he has all but won the next General Election save a monumental surprise or reversal of fortune. Mr Hannah’s extreme views makes someone like Cameron, a True Blue since birth, look positively socialist.

The public and the media have very short memories. Have we collectively forgotten that a huge percentage of the US public have not accepted, and will never accept the legitimacy of Barack Obama’s presidency? Not only he is a Democrat, which is bad enough for these people, but he is also a black man (ok, technically mixed race), from a foreign father, and his middle name is Hussein. Against all the odds, he won the presidential election and, against all the odds, is still alive. Still, this has not deterred hardcore Republicans from doing anything possible to get him out of office. Some even have started a campaign to question his place of birth [BBC] and thus his eligibility for Presidency.

I have never believed in Obama’s message of hope. I never bought the dream that Obama will change the USA, let alone the world, for the better. [previous post]

It is beyond the powers of any politician, head of super power or not, to improve the world –whatever that means. Obviously, almost anybody is going to be better than that ignoramus of George W Bush and his cohort of reactionary, corrupt, war-mongering lunatics. At least Obama will not make things worst, which is all we can hope for with regards to anything coming from the US politics establishment.

The Obama-bashing excuse now is the proposal for a reform on how to provide health care in the US. Perhaps one could argue that his mistake was to start a consultation. Blair did not have such qualms when he introduced a defacto privatisation of the NHS in England. But then again, he had an absolute majority in Parliament and did not need to bother with silly things like seeking consensus.

For my sins, as part of my job I have spent some time in the past poring over the financial statements of American companies. Most people now that some companies (like Ford or General Motors) have pension liabilities well in excess of their assets. But most people don’t know that health-care premiums are crippling American companies as much as their pension payouts.

In the US, there is no National Health Service (or a publicly funded health service of any kind) that provides universal health coverage. In the land of free-market dogma, health care has been completely privatised and some 47m of Americans do not have any health cover. Health provision is covered by private health insurance. If you are taken ill, and have no insurance or insufficient insurance, the hospital will recover the cost via any legal means, including forcing the patient into bankruptcy and selling his assets, including his home if he owns one.

The problem with such a system is the same as the car sales problem identified by Akerlof. Since the vast majority of us are ignorant about health matters, the insurers have more information about the potential cost of future health care than we have. It is a classic problem of information asymmetry and it will produce the same result in any market, whether is used cars or small company shares.

In the US, employers provide employees with private health cover. This is not the same as in the UK, where many of us have private cover provided by BUPA or a similar organisation. Private health cover in the UK is mostly a way to jump the queue for minor operations like a hernia or sport injuries, or bowel disease. If you need heart surgery, you will be treated in the NHS.

In the US, there is no universal provision of health care so you are left to your own devices. If you have a job, your employer will pay contributions towards a given level of cover. However, this level of cover is sometimes minimal, particularly if you don’t have a management or professional job, so the employee tops up the private health insurance cover with tax deductible contributions. The more you pay, the more you are covered for. In the last few years, the costs have rising so rapidly that companies are cutting on the level of cover provided, leaving employees to fork out the remaining contributions. This has also been driving lower disposable income for salaried Americans.

And it is this discretionary aspect of private health care in the US that is at the core of the problem. If people are pushed to decided whether to have an improved lifestyle (bigger house, bigger car, second residence, golf club membership, etc) or to have better medical insurance, a lot of people will not have the discipline and willpower to pay an ever rising percentage of their income towards their medical plan. It is easier to keep up with the Joneses by diverting that extra income into discretionary expenditure with higher utility.

Hard-line Republicans and the far-right lunatics have come out against any reform claiming that the NHS is almost a Stalinist government death machine. They sprout that any attempt to introduce any kind of social welfare in the US will be the start of socialism. Nothing should surprise us about these collection of ignorant thickos. What is surprising (or perhaps not so) is that they have chosen the British NHS as their target instead of say, the French or Canadian systems which are much better and cheaper to run.

Once again, while I was writing about this topic, I came across a column that explains in a more succinct way what I am trying to get at. [Sunday Herald].

And herein lies the problem, something the author only hints at: most Americans believe that if you don’t have adequate insurance is because you have not done well in life, because you are not trying hard enough. (it can also be because you value playing golf above your family's health). Work hard and you will have good medical cover. Introducing a minimum of state-sponsored medical health care system would be akin to providing something for nothing. This is anathema in the US.

This may strikes us Europeans as mean-spirited and downright nasty. No Christian compassion in the most evangelical Christian nation on earth. It is one of life’s paradoxes (do you remember when I wrote about how people who are in support of the death penalty tend to be against abortion and vice versa?). In US politics, the same people who reject the teaching of evolution in schools, are the most outspoken defenders of economic evolution for other human beings: survival of the fittest is alright for your fellow citizen but not for the rest of the species.

Obama will not win this battle, because he is trying to change something at the core of American citizenship: you get what you work for. Most US citizens believe that people who do not have insurance are layabouts, work-shy, socialists or even worse atheists, and therefore have zero-sympathy for their “self-inflicted” plight.

This will be the first of a many battles that Obama will lose. Half the country has not accepted and will not accept his presidency and will do their utmost to derail any possibility of a second mandate. The countdown has already started. The Obama dream is already fading away and the only way is down, down, down...

Fantasy news in La Vanguardia

Sometimes I wonder what newspaper foreign correspondents get up to that their reporting is so unreliable and often just plain wrong.

Many of us are used to the ignorant reporting of Spanish and in particular Catalan politics by the usual rent-a-word suspects who write for The Independent, Guardian, Times, and even The Economist and the FT. They tend to recycle whatever El País or El Mundo says without contrasting viewpoints or providing any insight whatsoever. I tend not to read them because there is just nothing to be gained from someone else’s ignorance.

I thought they were poor until I read this article from Rafael Ramos in La Vanguardia about Scottish politics. I almost choke on my porridge. According to Sr Ramos, the SNP government in Edinburgh has postponed the Referendum Bill.

I happen to spend the first 10-15min of my working day reading the news and I had not noticed such a big manifesto u-turn. Neither the FT nor any other newspaper had carried the big news. I normally watch Reporting Scotland at 1830h and they also seem to have missed this significant development. How is it possible for La Vanguardia to get such a scoop beating all of the Scottish media?

Except, of course, there is no scoop, because the SNP has not dropped the Referendum Bill and according to Salmond, they have no intention of doing so.

If La Vanguardia or any other media organisation need a Scottish correspondent who knows what is actually going on in this rainy corner of Europe, I am sure we could agree on a reasonable fee.

The rule of the law -for some

It is quite extraordinary what is happening in the UK in the last few months.

A few weeks ago, we woke up to discover that our elected representatives are more corrupt than any of us ever imagined. To its credit, The Daily Telegraph provided great and unpartisan coverage of the scandal. They are all, the vast majority, at it: Labour, Tories, LibDems and even the SNP. Milking the system for their own benefit.

I wonder how the Police and HMRC would react if I told them that I forgot to declare rental income from an old flat, or if I told them that I was getting tax exemption for items that had nothing to do with the rented property. Would a very sincere apology suffice?

They would probably let me know that “ignorance of the law is not excuse” or less likely they would intimate “ignorantia juris non excusat”.

Today, we woke up to find out that a newspaper has been breaking the law repeatedly and systematically, and that it is settling with the victims out of court trying to conceal the matter.

The Guardian reports that the News of the World, a British tabloid, has been tapping into mobile phones and landlines of public figures, with a view to get “exclusives”. [BBC]

The Metropolitan Police has decided that there is no case to answer and that further investigation is not in the public interest. Once again, the Metropolitan Police is not going to take any further the investigation of alleged crimes. [BBC].

So the question is:
- When is an alleged crime not deserving of a police investigation?

Answer:
- When the alleged criminal has more power and more means than the vast majority of citizens.

Thus, News International and particularly News of the World are left off the hook.

I see a pattern:

1) Insolvent banks are saved and bail out by the taxpayer, despite being private companies, because they are deemed too big to fail;

2) Politicians are immune from prosecution despite overwhelming evidence of tax fraud;

3) A powerful newspaper is spared a police investigation into alleged criminal conduct on an industrial scale, because it has the means to pay off its victims.

Thank God things could only get better.

Campaign struggling to start...

Well, the campaign to stop shaking hands with the less-than-honourable members has not made the impact I was hoping for… never mind.

I honestly think it would be a historical event if it were to catch on and spread all over the UK ahead of the European election on 20 June.

Any way, if you have a blog and want to spread the word, perhaps it is not too late.

http://trenator.blogspot.com/2009/05/dont-shake-hands-campaign.html

I have posted in The Independent, The Guardian, even it that Guido Fawkes blog (apologies Tom & Graeme, I thought this could get traction that way...) and other blogs but nothing is happening.

BBC censorship of Speaker's criticism

Sometimes I cannot help thinking that the BBC’s reputation for objectivity, neutrality and high journalistic standards is more a myth than reality. Particularly when it comes to criticism of the Scottish Labour party. In Spain everyone if full of how great the BBC is and how it should be a model for all public broadcasters. I used to agree. Now, after living in the UK for over 10 years, I am not sure. Myth, perception and reality intermingle.

Yesterday, I posted the below text in the Blether with Brian blog.
To my amazement, it has been removed as it apparently breaks the house rules on defamation.

Can anyone let me know what is in this post that is defamatory?

I have posted it again with a toned-down version, let’s see if it makes the cut…


========================
Brian,

The Speaker of the House is not a mere class rep.
The Speaker is supposed to lead.

If the less-than-honourable members have been up to no good, it is the Speaker’s job to tick them off.

Michael Martin was an awful speaker: inarticulate, mumbling, discourteous and with a tendency to gag people down. Nothing to do with class or background or accent: all to do with competence.

Michael Martin committed far too many errors to deserve any sympathy:

1) He was the main force behind the push for exemption from the FoI Act. He wanted the expenses system to be kept secret and wasted thousands of our tax money on legal fees.

2) When it was clear that this was going to come out, instead of saying sorry, instead of showing contrition or remorse, he calls in the Police to investigate the leak.

3) When a couple of backbenchers raise the issue, he shuts them down in the most childish and discourteous manner. (Hoey)

4) When another backbencher raises the issue of the no-confidence motion, again the mumbles, fumbles and shows why he should have never been the Speaker in the first place.

All this after having had a number of years to do something about this mess.
So, you understand that most of us have no sympathy for the shop steward that became one of them. Good riddance.
======================

Don’t shake hands campaign

Since the extent of the expenses scandal became clear, I have been flabbergasted at the dishonesty and the lack of morality of the vast majority of MPs.

Today, I propose that the public takes a stance.

I know I am a total nobody in the blogosphere but I think this is worth trying. If you can spread the message, perhaps it will catch on and set a global trend. With the European Elections campaign in June fast approaching, the least-than-honourable Members will be out and about campaigning to get our vote. Before we give them our vote, we should give them a piece of our mind.

What I am suggesting is that elected politicians are given the cold shoulder by the voting public.
I advocate that we should not shake hands with them, let alone let them kiss our babies for that arranged photo-opportunity.

Before we do such a thing, we are entitled to ask:

“Do you have a clear conscience with regards to your expenses claim?”

Alright, the answer is obvious: many of them do not seem to have a conscience; but still we should ask this and other questions. For example:

“Have you claimed for any personal items such as furniture, luxury
carpets, garden maintenance, pool cleaning, TVs, pet food, etc?”

“How many times have you flipped your home since becoming an MP?”

“How much have you claimed under the expense system?”

Just look them in the eye and watch their face.

If they are not elected yet, then we should be asking what expenses they are intending to claim on. I personally think that travel and mortgage interest should be enough for anybody on a £63k salary -nearly three times the national average before perks.

Then, after listening to their answer, and remembering at all times that they are highly skilled at lying and deceit, we will decide whether we want to shake hands or hand them over our precious baby to be kissed.

Be wise.

When in a hole, stop digging

Perhaps, there was a point in Michael Martin becoming the Speaker of the House. Maybe the toffs needed to be told by a Glasgow shop steward without any academic qualifications. Maybe the point needed to be made that anybody can raise to the top, even someone like Michael Martin.

But it has not worked and it has backfired.

Instead of the Man of the People, instead of keeping his feet on the ground, he has become the worst of them all. It tends to be the case that those who find wealth without risking their own, and with little effort or application, become easily accustomed to their new found riches.

The Labour Party stalwart, the man from Springburn, only the other day whinged like a spoilt kid against the pro-Tamil protesters outside Parliament. If The Daily Telegraph, not a traditional ally of socialist guerrillas, writes that these was one of the most polite and well managed demonstrations seen in Westminster, I for one will believe it.

Michael Martin however, in his chauffeur-driven car, complained bitterly during one of his interventions that his car had to drive around the square because of the pesky protesters. Pity the man.

Today, amazingly still in the job, he put out a statement with the s-word. Once upon a time, “sorry is the hardest word” worked as a journalistic cliché. After the empty apologies of the bankers, and the unsincere apologies of the least than Honourable Members, sorry does not mean anything. He said today he is “profoundly sorry”. [statement]

I, and any other person I speak to, am very clear that they are only sorry they got caught out with their pants down. They are not sorry about what they have been doing, they are sorry it became public, despite the Speaker’s best efforts to prevent disclosure at a cost of thousands of pounds in legal fees.

But today, when an MP raised the issue of a motion of no confidence, he dismissed it out of hand. If he had any morals, he would stand down but what can we expect from the man who furnishes his home, and gets his wife and her mate taxied around at our expense?


The BNP are obviously loving this and I would be surprised if they don’t get a few MEPs at the European Elections in June.

I remember the “Things Can Only Get Better” campaign (watched from The Clansman pub in Barcelona), followed up in the book, and since living in the UK since January 1999, and I have met many a Labour party activist who sincerely believed that the party would clean up politics, tackle the causes of crime and focus on education. And what we got was the privatisation of the NHS, tuitions fees, the Iraq war, sell-off of Royal Mail, and a perverse infatuation with the banking industry that has landed the UK in an absolute mountain of household and national debt, and a banking sector that is mostly insolvent. And then this.

Then, they complain when the public say they are all in it for themselves, and that they are all, save a handful of exceptions, a bunch of thiefs.

Labour and the lost moral compass

There is a massive scandal engulfing British politics. It relates to the expenses system operated in the House of Commons, the British Parliament. It turns out that our elected representatives are milking the system and claiming for everything under the sun: not only mortgage interest but food, newspapers, toilet rolls, home furnishings, gardening, porn movies, swimming pool clearning, horse manure, anything and everything you can think of.

This story has been led by The Daily Telegraph, also known as The Daily Torygraph , since last Friday. When it started last week, I was a bit sceptical. I thought it was just the start to the campaign for next year’s General Election. I wrongly assumed the newspaper would only publish embarrassing revelations about the Labour party and would leave Conservatives MPs in peace. In case you are not too hot on British politics, this newspaper is a bastion of Conservatism, a proper right-wing, Euroskeptic, anti trade union, free-market newspaper. Nothing wrong with that: everybody is entitled to their own opinion. Apart from the crass Europhobia and its unrepentant Thatcherism, it is/could be a decent newspaper I would buy every now and then. But I don't.

Today however, it has been the first time in over 10 years that I have picked up a copy of The Daily Telegraph at Glasgow Airport on my way to London. Despite the flight being full exclusively of suited types, I was the only one to pick a free copy. The Daily Telegraph is not a popular read in Scotland, not least because of their Scottish Politics correspondent, a resentful, narrow-minded British Nationalist with a profound disdain for Scottish devolution.

Anyway, back to the story, I have been astounded at the lack of compunction by the shamed MPs. You see, what they did was within the rules, apparently. The rules that they themselves designed and policed. Reading these revelations made my blood boil. Had I seen any of these scumbags in the plane I would have given them a piece of my mind.

If you want to read about it, check The Daily Telegraph or BBC News.

But if that was not bad enough, just wait.

Yesterday, Tuesday 11 May, a Labour backbencher challenged the Speaker of the House about this issue. The Speaker is responsible for the office that manages the expense system. This parliamentarian raises her concerns about this mess. But this idiot, this disgraceful member of the Labour party, instead of acknowledging the scale of the problem, tries to bully the MP.

The following day, Tuesday 12 May, another parliamentarian puts it to the Speaker that he should consider the tone and the way he addressed his colleague.
The Ogre of Sprinburg declines:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/8046601.stm

Right. But that is not enough.

Today as well, another of the Labour grandees, Lord Foulkes, [wiki] when challenged by a BBC journalist, instead of showing repentance, instead of apologising for the way MPs are screwing up taxpayers, furnishing their homes at our expense, tries to bully the journalist and retaliates back with a personal attack. Watch this:


The party of the people: Iraq war, backing of nuclear weapons on the Clyde (anyone remember CND?), ID cards, privatising NHS, tuitions fees, faith schools, PPP/PFI, privatising Royal Mail, infatuation with the banking industry, more tax loopholes than ever for the rich, and now this.

There is absolutely no policy difference between the Conservatives and Labour. None.

Somehow, even though I have never voted Labour whilst living in the UK, I do feel sorry for all the hardworking, if delusional, grassroots activists who can only witness in dismay how the party of the people has ended up being ruled by a spineless, warmongering, lying bunch of self-serving bullies.

The Labour party has lost its moral compass and the sooner there is an election the better.
After all, if we are going to be ruled by a bunch of self-serving arrogant twats, then I’d rather it was the genuine article. At least then we know where we all stand.

The New Capitalism -by the BBC

Over the last year or so, there is one man that has become a source of pain for some in the financial services sector. Some journalists don’t like him either. It is Robert Peston, BBC Business Editor. [blog]

His idiosyncratic style and general slow delivery (plus mumbling and fumbling and humming) irritates many. Others are irritated by his “attacks” on the financial services sector and the markets. The right-wing blogosphere attack him for being a "leftie" and the mouthpiece of the Labour government. Or so they claim. Stockbrokers and investment managers despise him because he “brings the market down”. I thought the markets were "efficient"?
The FT journos call him Pestowire, or Peston RNS, a reference to the Regulatory News Service used for the public dissemination of financial markets announcements.

It is difficult to convey to anyone living outside the UK how pervasive Mr Peston’s presence in the BBC has become. Since his reports on the debacle of Northern Rock, and the collapse of the banking system and consequent recession, his presence is the main feature of the 6pm and 10pm news bulletins every single day. I remember one day he even broadcast from the garden in his house.

Recently, he has published a short essay with the title “The New Capitalism”. [PDF]
They are summarised in these two videos. [link]

Personally, I don’t have any issues with his reporting. And when someone’s argument is over style, or personality, you know that people are on a loser. So I haven’t got much sympathy for those who blame Peston for anything. The world, or the stock markets, would not be any different, had Robert Peston not reported on the stories we all know about now. Shooting the messenger is not the answer to this problem, and it shows how inward-looking and shamelessly self-preserving the financial services sector (I refuse to use the word ‘industry’) has become: denial has become the modus operandi in the face of an unpleasant reality.

I do have a bit of an issue with this essay though. Not much with the content than with it having the logo of the BBC as an endorsement. So is this the BBC’s vision of capitalism post-credit crunch or Peston’s? It may be trivial and I might be over-analysing, but the presentation of this essay is not clear, and as a license fee payer I object the way in which has been delivered.

I have no issue with Peston’s book “Who rules Britain”. It may read more like a series of articles and it lacks a cohesive argument, a central thesis that it is presented to the reader. But overall, it provides a few examples of how the City and big businesses work, and how tax avoidance, sorry tax efficiency, has been encouraged by the Labour government.

But reading his essay on the new capitalism taking shape, I could not help but wondering about some of the statements and claims made:

“Arguably the global economic crisis will turn out to be more significant for us
and other developed economies than the collapse of communism.”

Well, I disagree completely. The collapse of communism left millions of people in the world, including Europe, ideologically orphan. Suddenly, there was no alternative to capitalism in its various forms. Communism, the egalitarian, collectivist alternative had failed. We went from two competing systems to one. Now we are going from an imperfect system to another one.

I agree 100% on the debt binge ('credit expansion' to be technical about it) as the key cause of the present crisis.

Some of the language is quite emotive:

“To put it in crude terms, for much of the past decade, millions of Chinese
slaved away on near subsistence wages and still managed to save, both as a
nation (China swanks £1,400bn in foreign exchange reserves) and as individuals.
And to a large extent they were working to improve our living standards, because
they made more and more of the stuff we wanted at cheaper and cheaper prices.”

It is naive to say the Chinese slaved away on near subsistence wages. Living standards in industrialized areas of China have risen in a way that was unthinkable a few years ago. If they were “slave” wages, then they could not save as much as they do. Agreed, the wages are low compared to Western standards, but wage differentials should not be measured in absolute terms, otherwise workers everywhere except western Europe are too slaving away. I could even concede that most factory workers in China are on relatively low wages, a byproduct of the excess supply of labour, but average Chinese wages are by no means “slave”. Also, and more importantly, the Chinese were not working to improve our standards or toiling for our prosperity: they were working to improve theirs, like any sensible nation does.
It would be more appropriate to say that we were outsourcing work to China so that we could buy goods at cheaper prices and keep inflation down.

I agree that the savings imbalances and the current account deficits in the UK and US (and also Spain) are unsustainable and that our low inflation in the last few years is the result of excess savings from emerging economies being recycled into UK, US and Euro-area debt.

And I also agree with the culpability. All of us to a certain extent for being addicted to compsumption, but mainly our financial institutions for having failed to protect the interests of their shareholders, creditors and customers, and our governments and regulators for having failed to take the appropriate regulatory (disclosure, capital requirements) and political (current account deficits, allowing outsourcing to countries with unacceptable working conditions, supporting asset inflation) decisions to prevent this crisis from happening.

But Mr Peston forgets to mention the issue of taxation and the use of low-tax jurisdictions by companies and business leaders, and how this Labour government has done nothing to stop it.
He also forgets to mention the use of off-balance sheet vehicles by banks. The Labour government and the FSA did nothing to prevent it. And he does not mention that this goverment has overseen tax changes that favour the megarich and private equity at the expense of middle class earners.

But Peston also forgets to mention the concessions China, India and others will extract from keeping buying our public debt. Just now China, if they wanted to, could bring Western economies to its knees simply by refusing to buy our low-interest, low yield government debt. But the Chinese will not do that. They will keep buying US and UK debt and will extract political concessions from the West.

What these concessions will be is difficult to predict. But I am going to venture a couple of possible scenarios:

Institutional reform: the Chinese and India will demand that international institutions are reformed and the US veto is abolished at the IMF and the World Bank.

Taiwan: Slowly, Tibet has become off-limits for the West. And next it will be Taiwan. If I were Taiwanese I would be crapping myself. Over the next few years we will see how China, slowly but surely, will gain gradual sovereignty over Taiwan as a condition for keeping Western capitalism ticking over. And this way, Mao’s dream of a unified China under one leader and one party will be accomplished.

But will the US accept that they no longer have the monopoly of power in world finance? Will they (we) accept to be humiliated once again over Tibet and Taiwan? Maybe not, since Western governments will be unable to control the press and public opinion as efficiently as the Chinese. So we are heading for a political and economic stalemate of unpredictable consequences.

There is one way out of this problem without the Chinese becoming the new superpower and gaining power over Taiwan: inflation. If the West is unwilling to make so many concessions, China, India, Gulf states and others will demand that US and UK government debt pays a higher rate of interest than it does now. That is something our governemtns can do very well, and technically is called "an increase of the money supply", or as my dad says, "printing more money". This however will fuel inflation in the US and UK and Euro-area which could have a devastating effect on employment and business investment -unless proteccionist measures are adopted to protect "national" industries. But then, protectionism itself keeps inflation high; there is no easy solution.

So over the next few years our political leaders will have to make very “tough” (don’t they love to use the word?) choices.

Do they accept that a new world order is emerging and that there are political prices to pay? Or will they postpone or delay this restructuring of world finance and political power by implementing inflationary policies that will reduce the nominal amounts of national debt but fuel domestic inflation?

In crude terms, the question is: will our (Western) politicians give up the world power mechanisms they have built up over the last few decades?

I know what my answer is. What is yours?

What has the Labour Party ever done for Glasgow East?

Excellent news today in Scotland: the Labour party, after decades of neglect, have been voted out. Glasgow East, one of the most deprived areas in the UK, has returned a SNP MP for the first time ever.

Congratulations to the SNP and to the people of Glasgow East.

Time is a scarce resource

Regular readers will have noticed that I have been not very active of late. There are a variety of reasons:

+ Work: the credit liquidity squeeze and the return of volatility have resulted in longer hours at work.
+ Studies: the MBA thesis on credit default swaps is also taking longer that expected. Final deadline (I have already had a couple of extensions…) is 7 December 2007, so not a lot of time left.
+ Commuting: normally I drive from the outskirts of Glasgow to Edinburgh. This month, however I am trying to commute by train. Next year, if/when I have more time, I will write about public transport provision in the UK.
+ Too much to write about: frankly, there is too much happening. I feel overwhelmed with developments in Scottish/British politics and Catalan/Spanish politics. Where should I start. Thus, I feel easier to reply to other people’s blogs, even if they are slightly bonkers. Hello John and Trevor.

If all that was not enough, to be brutally honest, the few spare hours I have I’d rather spend them with my gorgeous, lovely, pretty and extremely patient girlfriend.

It has been a few interesting weeks. I have been accused of being both “obviously right-wing” and a “far-leftist” by Iberian Notes because of this post. Iberian Notes is a blog by a north American expat living in Barcelona which regurgitates the same bile and hatred towards Catalonia and its sense of nationhood and cultural, social and political identity as the most vicious and aggressive Spanish nationalist portals like Libertad Digital. Well it seems the guy used to work for them so no surprises there.

What I did not expect when I set up this blog (in September 2003 no less) is that I would be quoted out of context by El País newspaper:

http://www.elpais.com/articulo/cataluna/Independentismo/elpepuespcat/20071107elpcat_15/Tes (Spanish)

The post the article is referring is this one: It’s time. I notice the journalist cites the comment left by Ox, but not my reply with web links, or Ox’s lack of counter-reply. I will dedicate another post to this article next week.

In any case, for the benefit of Mr Delclós and Ox, I did not equate political independence to a complete assurance of improving life expectancy; rather, the crux of the post, for anyone that wants to read it properly, is that +50 years of Labour rule in Glasgow has failed to address this and many other social issues, that a change in policy is required and that only the SNP can provide the cathartic change Scotland so much needs.

Can anyone argue back that keeping Labour in power will resolve the many social issues we face in the west of Scotland when they have proved to be incapable of doing so in +50 years?

US foreign policy: Weapons of Mass Destruction

Today, I have heard one of the most chilling programmes on the radio for a very long time. I used to work in a local radio station, and I listen to the wireless all the time, as I hardly watch much TV, apart from the news and Still Game.

It was a long day at work today, and I finished about 19.45h. On the way back, I realised that Hecklers, the new Radio 4 debate program was on. Excellent, I thought: long day in the office, but a pleasurable drive back from Edinburgh to Glasgow listening to informed opinions and intelligent debate.

But the proposer of tonight’s programme was one of the most dangerous and deluded people I have ever heard on the BBC.

Patrick Clawson, of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, argues that
it would be better to have a war with Iran than to allow its government to
develop nuclear weapons. He debates the issues with a panel of hecklers,
including George Galloway, in front of an audience at Chatham House in London.

This individual argued, in his soft American tone and paused, affable, if slightly irritating speech, that it would be in the best interests of the West to go to war against Iran rather than to allow that country to develop nuclear weapons. Patrick Clawson is deputy director for research of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. More info on the interesting views espoused by Mr Clawson here…
Don’t want to go into a tangent here... but Near East? I always thought it was Far East but never mind...

After a few minutes listening to his disparaging arguments I started to feel sick. My legs were trembling. Listening to that man gave me the creeps. I was listening to a man advocating going to war against Iran as a pre-emptive step to bring stability to the region.
Now, where have we heard this line of argument before?

Although the program is called Hecklers, it is nothing of the sort. The proposer has three slots in which he can develop his argument and the ‘hecklers’ (panellists) are not allowed to interrupt during the first 3 minutes or so of each slot. Then a bell goes off and the panel guests are allowed to raise questions. Today, George Galloway MP was always the first to speak up after the bell rang.

Whatever one thinks of Mr Galloway and his politics and media persona, it is undeniable that the man is a great orator, and one of the few MPs in Parliament willing to challenge the establishment. If only there were a few more like him, perhaps this country would not be now fighting a pointless and illegal war based on false “intelligence”. As much as I disagree with the majority of Gorgeous George’s politics, today he was top notch. He tore apart every one of the arguments put forward by Mr Clawson.

I recommend that you set aside about 1 hour of your time to listen to the program via the BBC Radio 4 website.

It shows to what extent American foreign policy is the cause, rather than the cure, for most of the ills in the Middle East and the Gulf region. For Mr Clawson, it is quite alright that Israel already has nuclear weapons pointing at Iran and other states, and that we (as in the US and the UK) are supplying conventional and nuclear weapons to Saudi Arabia and Pakistan. The former is a theocracy where women are second class citizens. The regime in Saudi Arabia is probably the most tyrannical in the region, and certainly the least accountable to the population. As for Pakistan, it is a breeding ground for Al-Qaida terrorists, and a country divided between a secular or moderate population and the mullahs supporting Islam fundamentalism. What happens if the latter ever get into power and get control of the nuclear weapons supplied by the US and the UK?

Exactly this is what happened a few decades ago. In order to overthrow the Soviets from Afghanistan, the US financed and supplied the Mujaidins with training and conventional weapons. Once the Soviets were expelled from the region, they turned against the US and the West. These are the origins of Al-Qaida: US finance and training. The US trained and armed Osama Bin Laden. That is the result of US foreign policy.

You may be too young to remember: Iran was a democracy a long time ago. However, its leaders did not yield to US and UK foreign policy so the US&UK instigated a coup after Iran's elected government renationalised the oil industry; then the Shah took over and instituted a dictatorial regime. Read more about Operation Ajax in the Wikipedia. Yes, we (the US and the UK) instigated a coup against a democratically elected government to get control of Iranian oil.
The people of Iran rebelled, both the secular moderates (yes, there was a Communist Party in Iran...) and the Islamists joined forces and they did overthrow the dictator; sadly, the radical Islamists won the internal battle for government control. Then they turned against the US and against the West.

Remember the Iran/Iraq war of the ‘80s. Well, guess what: Saddam Hussein was supported by the West and supplied with the conventional and chemical weapons he used in the bloody war against Iran. We (US and UK) supplied Saddam Hussein and his regime with weapons. A few years later, the US and the UK bombarded Iraq, causing mass civilian casualties but without deposing the dictator. In 2003, we then have the illegal invasion of Iraq by the US-led coalition and the country is now is a much worst state, on the brink of civil war and engulfed in sectarian violence, than it was with Saddam in power. And now the Iraqis are turning against the US and the West.

Do you see a pattern emerging?

You can read all this and much, much more in the extraordinary, priceless, colossal book “The Great War for Civilisation: The Conquest of the Middle East" by Robert Fisk.
Admittedly, I have not yet started reading the book. A certain master degree thesis on Credit Default Swaps is taking a lot of my spare time –about 1 year and 4 months to be exact.

So you can imagine my anger when this very dangerous man was arguing live on BBC radio 4, the moral and cultural backbone of Britain, that a US strike against Iran would somehow encourage middle-class Iranians to rebel and overthrow the tyrannical dictatorship of the Council of Guardians. It was frightening.

However “imperfect” (a word he constantly used to refer to the Non-Proliferation Treaty) the Iranian electoral system is, at least people can and do vote. The same cannot be said of Saudi Arabia, apparently the West's ally in the region, with its total disregard for human rights and lack of any progress towards democracy or a more equal society for men and women.

He also said that an attack against Iran would prevent the NPT from becoming irrelevant, even though there are “imperfections” (i.e: non-compliance) in the system. He said something along the lines of “I would hate to lose that imperfect instrument in the pursuit of the perfect instrument”. In other words: it is ok for the UK, the US, France, Israel, India, Russia and others to violate the terms and the spirit of the NPT, but not for Iran. Some hypothetical, yet-to-happen, imperfection is punished by war; current imperfections are ignored. To say this smacks of double standards would be an understatement.

We are told that Iran, according to Mr Clawson, is an “irrational player”, behaving according to an “apocalyptic theocratic view” of the world. At this point I almost choked on my chocolate bar. Is it not the President of the United States who had claimed that God had given him permission to go to war in order to prevent the threat of an Iraqi attack against the West? To me that sounds pretty much like an irrational player with a theocratic apocalyptic view of the world.

No nation has behaved more irrationally in the Middle East than the US. Supporting and arming some dictatorships; going to war against others; and doing both with some, as in Iraq. Yet, Mr Clawson, and the US political establishment, either Democrats or Republicans, are in complete denial about the havoc, mayhem and suffering US foreign policy has created around the world, especially in the Middle East.

The last point put forward by Mr Clawson is beyond surreal. He argues that an US-led attack against Iran would unite Iranians in blaming their own government for developing nuclear weapons and thus provoking a crisis. This popular rebellion would result in the Iranian regime engaging (i.e: yielding to US foreign policy) with the West. For someone who claims to be an expert in the Middle East, this is surely a joke.

But the warmongering lunatic goes on: according to him, an attack against Iran should not mean a land invasion of the country, but rather targeted, high-precision attacks against military objectives. Have we not heard this before? Yes, we have. As recently as 2003, when the US-UK coalition targeted attacks against Iraqi military infrastructure resulted in hundreds of civilian casualties and the destruction of hospitals. I also remember a certain aspirin factory in Sudan that was targeted with a combination of intelligence and high-precision weaponry.

Mr Clawson also argued that not only Iran’s population would rebel against their elected leadership following a US attack, but also that Iran’s neighbours would rise to the challenge and support US action too. This is the world of fantasy inhabited by the neocon revolutionaries in the US.

This last point was absolutely demolished by all panellists. One by one, audience members and panellists reduced Mr Clawson “lightweight argument”(quote from a former correspondent of the FT in Tehran) to what they are: absolute warmongering shite. The only voice of support came from, wait for it... an US Embassy employee.
Priceless if it was not so depressing.

What is scary about this man and his ilk is their level of delusion; their disregard for the facts about the Middle East, and the loss of human life; their arrogant ignorance of the damage US foreign policy has caused in the region in the last 40 years, 20 years or even since the ill-conceived invasion of Iraq. As with the Iraqi non-existent weapons of mass destruction, an enemy is created and the threat is hyped up in the friendly press, and thus war is justified. Their irrational minds see no flaw in this perverse logic, despite its disastrous consequences in Iraq, or in Iran decades ago.

War is still another option in the US foreign policy toolkit and the neocons have not learnt anything. And now they want to start another war against Iran. History will not be kind to these despicable people.

And the question for us in Britain is: what will PM Gordon Brown do? Will he be America’s lap dog like former PM Blair, or will he have an “ethical foreign policy”, as New Labour promised in 1997? I am not sure I want to know.

Next week, Hecklers will hopefully be less frightening and distressing. Tax specialist Richard Murphy argues at the free market Institute of Economic Affairs that Britain should stop trying to woo the foreign super rich with tax breaks.