Shameless

Thursday, October 30, 2008

Shameless

Amongst the minimal media coverage of the MoD equipment package, The Sun, interestingly, picks up on the Buffalo.

After extolling the virtues of the vehicle (quite rightly), it then cites shadow defence secretary Dr Liam Fox, who says: "Promises for tomorrow are little consolation if troops have insufficient protection today."

Has this man no shame?

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Will the last grown up …

Some things you don't expect. There's me, mild-mannered and inoffensive – sweet reason itself - and all I wanted was my newspaper.

Plopping it on the counter and digging deep to find the pennies to pay for it, the newsagent – a lovely, cheerful Indian - seized it, brandishing it the air. "Country going to rack and ruin," he stormed, "and they put this on the front page!"

Ahem … and page four, five, the lead editorial, to say nothing of God knows how many prattling columnists, whom I never bother to read.

My man was, of course, talking about the lead item in The Daily Telegraphtelling us of "crisis talks" on the Ross Brand affair. I agree with him. Who gives a s**t, one thinks. Nuke the Beeb and move on. 

The story about the MoD spending £700 million on new vehicles for the Army gets about three column-inches at the bottom of page two. There is a major scandal buried in this, which may emerge – but don't bet on it.

Meanwhile, the Conservative Party is tearing itself apart over at Tory Diary, completely missing the point about why its own efforts are such a failure. One commentator notes: "Backbenchers are fed up at being ignored." Amen!

There was that wry old joke, commenting about the state of the economy, asking the last businessman leaving Britain to turn out the lights. That needs revisiting. "Will the last grown up to leave …" it should read, "… blow out the candle".

As the children play, there won't be any electricity to power the lights.

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What's in a name?

You have to smile.

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Another fine mess

Wasn't this one the EU was supposed to havesorted out?

After their last stunning success, when they really impressed the natives, we'd better send for theEuropean Army again.

Or perhaps it's the turn of the United Nations (pictured). Oh! Woops! It'salready there.

In 2006, we were citing "analysts" who were saying that the United Nations, which had 17,500 peacekeepers in the country, "would have to act with unaccustomed resolution to prevent the run-off from spiralling out of control and returning the country to civil war." This, we said, will never happen. That means, we said, the country is almost certainly doomed to another bloody bout of civil war.

Last night, the BBC, as the situation deteriorated, the BBC was reporting correspondents saying the 17,000-strong UN force in DR Congo - the world's largest - is "stretched to breaking point".

With the United Nations Security Council in emergency session Ban Ki-moon calling for "more troops", the French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner said that up to 1,500 men could be deployed "in Europe's name within eight to 10 days". 

No sooner said, however, than it was unsaid. After a meeting in Paris with his Australian counterpart, Kouchner admitted that EU member states had discussed a possible deployment but "a certain number of countries refused." 

"It's very difficult to say what we can do outside of diplomatic efforts, efforts at persuasion, and efforts so that peace can be achieved by leaning on the two countries, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Rwanda," he added, offering no further details. 

"This is really a desperate situation. Honestly, my personal attitude is to try to do something," Kouchner concluded. "I hope that the French presidency will make a proposal in the coming days."

It is all so predictable – and so very, very sad.

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Wednesday, October 29, 2008

Told you so!

The British snow has struck! The story (and pic) is in The Daily Telegraph. 

Forecasters, we are told, are blaming a change in wind direction for the wintry spell with Arctic gusts replacing the mild south-west Atlantic breezes enjoyed in recent weeks. I am truly amazed they haven't put it down to global warming.

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A failure of opposition

An answer to a routine parliamentary question from Lord Lee of Trafford on 16 October of this year was hardly calculated to excite any great interest. The outcome, however, turned out to be more than unusually interesting and - despite (or because of) the picture illustrated above - has significant lessons for the Conservative Party.

Continued on Defence of the Realm.

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Sterile and infantile …

That was the verdict of today's PMQs from a commentator, heard on the BBC Radio 4 World at One programme. I missed the speaker's name – as always, one is only half-listening.

Whoever it was, we agree. Watching the dismal, puerile display, one is deeply saddened. Neither side of the House comes out well but we were less than impressed by the leader of the opposition, who seems now to typify the decay of the Tory Party.

And, although we have said it before, we will say it again … and again, for as long as it takes. This is not a game. There are real people out there, hurting. If MPs continue to play their sterile and infantile games in the House, therewill be a reckoning.

I, for one, will be cheering the tumbrels as they pass.

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Crisis!

This was the scene in Coventry this morning, that bit of England stuck somewhere between London and Yorkshire the paradise at the centre of England. It was sent to us by an embattled reader (nice garden!), who bravely withstood the vicissitudes of this frenzied nightmare to record the scene.

Our American cousins may look upon this as a minor event, but what they fail to understand (but then what do you expect of a nation that has Obama for a presidential candidate?) is that this is British snow.

While it might take feet – or even yards – of the mamby pamby Yank snow to do any appreciable harm, British snow is so powerful that even half an inch of the stuff is enough to bring an end to life as we know it.

Less even than that has been known to bring down power lines, block our motorways (US translation: freeways) and stop every train in the country – even those in areas where no snow has fallen – causing untold misery and disruption to millions of people.

London snow is even more powerful and to be feared all the more. Two inches, especially if it falls within a mile of a national newspaper office, has the front pages cleared and a national emergency declared. There are urgent debates in Parliament which invariably culminate in the appointment of a Minister of Snow. That usually ensures we have warm, wet weather for the next six months.

Americans, therefore, need to count their lucky stars. In a few days time, they may have the misfortune to have elected what will most certainly be one of the worst presidents in history – and there is some considerable competition for that – but at least they do not have British snow. That really would be a crisis.

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Serves them right

Having followed the convoluted affairs of Volkswagen since 2004, we cannot help but indulge ourselves in a small smile, quickly suppressed, at the plight of hedge fund traders who are, according to The Daily Telegraph, taking a "bloodbath".

Based on the assumption that this German company would share the fate of the rest of the automotive industry, speculative "short sellers" have been holding short positions in anticipation of the share price plummeting as the demand for vehicles drops in the recession.

Instead, as news came though that Porsche - which has been attempting to take over the VW for some years – had secured a larger stake in the company than anyone had thought, shares rocketed, prompting "a huge scramble to cover short positions in Volkswagen, which had been the most shorted stock in Germany's benchmark DAX index."

One hedge fund said: "There have been some dark moments over the past few months but none blacker than this. We couldn't have dreamt a worse scenario." "The German stock exchange has become a joke," said Andy Brough, a fund manager at Schroders. 

The point, of course, is that the VW saga goes way back, and we have a heady mix of high finance, politics, local German law and EU intervention – the combination of which means that normal market rules most certainly do not apply to this company. The moment politics and business mix to this extent, beware.

Unfortunately – for them – financial wizz-kids tend to be more than a little naïve when it comes to politics, a stance most often tempered by a certain arrogance, fostering a belief that they are somehow immune to the meddling of the dark forces.

Well, in this instance, they have been well and truly caught out. The Porsche takeover – which would had happened years ago but for the meddling of politicians – has been artificially held back but, behind the scenes manoeuvring at a political rather than business level, has enabled it to make the breakthrough. But, being "political" rather than financial, the clever, highly paid analysts and their trader pals missed the signs.

We do not claim any great prescience – but then we are not highly-paid analysts who do this sort of thing for a living. But anyone with at least moderately-tuned political antennae would have cautioned that you treat VW issues with the very greatest of care, tainted as they were by a complex political overlay. The "normal" assumptions simply do not apply.

Clearly, the expensive-suited traders did not take enough care. Shame!

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