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Spain: out of control, approaching the end game
Instinct tells me that this is the end game. We've all been here before, and crisis fatigue has reached monster proportions. But this is too big, happening too quickly for the "colleagues" to handle. The situation is spiralling out of control.
COMMENT THREAD
Richard North 31/05/2012 There's a hole in my Bradford …
I took a few photos, talked to the people there and broke bread with them. And if there was ever hope for the future, it was there.
What was so uplifting is in the pictures. You might see Asians – I saw and spoke to Bradfordians, people passionately interested in our city, sick to the teeth of lazy, corrupt and indifferent councillors and officials, people determined to do something about it.
I have said this before, but there is an awful lot of rubbish talked about Bradford, about immigrants, multiculturalism, and the rest – usually by people who don't live here and know nothing of us.
And I've also said that, if it ever came to standing on the barricades and making a choice between the people of Bradford and our rulers, I would have no difficulty in making a decision. That is the reality – that is Bradford.
One lads I talked to runs a blog, and put up a good post a few years back on the issue. He alsoposted on Sunday, when George Galloway came visiting. And there is part of your answer as to why politicians are so disliked. He and a couple of Respect Councillors came to listen. No other politician from any other party has been near – neither MP not councillor.
The "Occupy Westfield" group – one a solicitor, one a council worker, others in a variety of occupations – have set up a marquee in the strip of scrub outside the main site, a piece of land cynically given the name of "urban park", and aim to stay there until their demands are met.
They want an audience with the leader of the council and the head of regeneration (oddly enough, my ward councillor); they want all the local MPs and councillors to stand with them and discuss how to prevent this city sinking further; and they demand a public inquiry into how and why Bradford has been left devastated by the Council and the developers.
The comments on the forum make it clear that we are not alone, but it takes a special kind of incompetence to rip the guts out of the centre of your city, hand it over to fly-by-night developers, and then end up with a ten acre hole that blights the area, smashing an already fragile economy.
This is democracy in action – people power. The plod have not intervened, so it is a stand-off between these dedicated people and the ruling cabal who have made such a mess of the city, at such a cost. If you haven't already read Jim's post, have a look at it, and see what we have been putting up with. Incompetence doesn't even begin to describe it. .
And if you really want to know what is happening to democracy in this country, forget Randall and his blatherings from the bubble. Come to the front line, see our hole and wonder how an administration – any administration - could do this to its own people. .
When you have pondered long enough, you may find that the answer to a lot of the nation's problems is represented by our hole. Some of our forum members think the answer is to fill it with the carcasses of our failed politicians. They may be right. Those politicians certainly need to believe that this is becoming a more serious option, with every passing day.
COMMENT: "BRADFORD" THREAD
Richard North 31/05/2012 Bradford city centre: it really is grim oooop North
Bradford Council is good at holes. We've had this one for nearly nine years, created in part by compulsorily purchasing over ninety properties to pass to the Makers Of The Hole.
And now, people are fed up. Jim Greenhalf tells the story. He's been to The Hole. I'm going to pop in there tonight. Funny thing is, I may not like the people, but I certainly approve of what they are doing.
COMMENT THREAD
Richard North 30/05/2012 From within the bubble: Ken Clarke is great
Richard North 30/05/2012 Lagarde: taxes are for little Greeks
Telling us she had more sympathy for children deprived of decent schooling in sub-Saharan Africa than for many of those facing poverty in Athens, she bluntly told Greek parents to take responsibility if their children are being affected by spending cuts. "Parents have to pay their tax", she said.
But how typical of the slime that infest the upper echelons of our society is our Christine. As an official of an international institution, we learn that her salary is $467,940 (£298,675) a year plus $83,760 additional allowance a year. And none of it is subject to taxes. Christine Lagarde does not pay any taxes. Those are for little Greeks.
On similar lines, we also learn that a former executive of the failed Spanish bank, Bankia, is to get a €14m payoff, just as the Spanish government is "set to cause controversy if Europe is asked to foot some of €19 billion needed to bail out the bank".
Now good readers – what you don't see are the e-mails and other comments I get when I use that now-famous punchline: "And the reason we don't rise up and slaughter them all is?" One of the mildest of epithets I get is "irresponsible".
But, as I made out in a very recent piece, I am not urging violent revolution, murder and mayhem. However, if I were ever to change my mind, I would certainly know where to start. And who then would be irresponsible?
COMMENT THREAD
Richard North 30/05/2012 Coulson shows Cameron not made of right stuff
But now Coulson is detained on suspicion of perjury, an offence alleged to have been committed while he was actually working for No. 10, The Boy's judgement is looking even more shaky.
That is what matters. We have a man who, fundamentally, lacks good judgement. Such venality is forgivable in mere minions and grovelling serfs such as ourselves (and punished in myriad ways). But a man who would be prime minister has to be made of sterner stuff.
And more and more, it seems, Cameron is not made of the right stuff.
COMMENT THREAD
Richard North 30/05/2012 A small act for freedom …
Richard North 30/05/2012 EU referendum: a bad idea slammed by another bad idea
Quite how that equates to the country as a while though, is difficult to assess. Actually, I tell a lie. It is impossible to assess. As an indicator of general public sentiment, the poll is meaningless.
Even as a measure of Tory sentiment, the poll cannot be taken as presenting useful information. In a self-selecting exercise such as this, one might expect a stronger participation from those supporting the proposition, and the sample is further biased by being confined to the tiny sub-set who actually read the blog, constituting nothing that even approaches a representative sample.
Despite this, the exercise carries a warning for those who think a referendum would be a shoe-in for the sceptics. Given a choice between "substantial renegotiation" and then staying in the EU, 34 percent go for that option, as against 54 percent who want to get out and then negotiate a separate trade agreement.
Take those figures and factor in the Labour and Lib-Dim supporters, the bulk of whom might vote for staying in, and then add the seventy-percent or so of the people who support no particular party – the voting intentions of whom are indeterminate – and it would be a brave man who argued that we have majority support for an exit.
Such subtleties, of course, completely escape the Daily Wail, which has The Boy "consulting senior Conservatives" over plans "to promise a referendum on Europe in the party's next manifesto".
Any chance of that being a vote-winner, though, would quickly evaporate if Labour also promised a referendum. But the likelihood is that it would have little effect of a cynical electorate decides that the promises are worthless.
One man who could help change the calculus, though, is Kenneth Clarke. In typically offensive stylehe dismisses the referendum call as "irrelevant and silly", which it probably is, but this is not something a politician should say of his voters, in that manner.
On the BBC Today programme, Clarke declared: "It is the demand of a few Right-wing journalists and a few extreme nationalist politicians. I cannot think of anything sillier to do than to hold a referendum". He then added: "It would settle nothing with the more frenzied Eurosceptics, who keep believing that European bogies are under the bed".
Some more reasoned Tory politicians are prone to taking offence at the vitriol piled upon their breed, but they should perhaps recall that Clarke is one of their number, a Tory politician. What he has to say, even if it has a germ of truth, is deeply offensive and, as long as they stand by him, they associate themselves with his words – even if by default.
Clarke, more than anyone, however, could drive the determination to pursue a referendum, if for no other reason than to get back at the man. That would be a very bad idea, as indeed the referendum is a very bad idea. But being a bad idea never stopped anything in politics. One only has to look at Clarke to see that.
COMMENT THREAD
Richard North 30/05/2012 Judge overturns wind farm plan on amenity grounds
Sea Land and Power, which made the original application on 8 September 2009, had argued that the need to meet renewable energy targets over-rode any environmental or amenity considerations, but Justice Lang disagreed.
The site had been identified by Great Yarmouth Council in its 2001 Borough Wide Local Plan as "landscape important to the broadland scene" and "landscape important to settlements", refusing the application on the grounds that the turbines would have "a significant adverse effect upon the landscape character".
In a planning inquiry in November 2010, the inspector stated that it was "inevitable" that the turbines "would create a degree of harm in this essentially rural location". He supported the refusal on the basis that the adverse impact was "so significant" that it outweighed the need for renewable energy.
Justice Lang, in her judgement handed down yesterday, has ruled that "as a matter of law" it was not correct to assert that the national policy promoting the use of renewable resources ... negated the local landscape policies or must be given "primacy" over them.
In thus upholding the planning inspector in rejecting the development, Laing has overturned a long-held precept that the need to meet renewables targets is paramount, and quite possibly opens the gates to a flood of rejections of onshore sites.
Slowly, gradually, but inexorably, the government's energy policy continues to crumble. By 2020, the renewable industry had hoped to have erected around 10,000 more onshore turbines, to add to the 3,500 already in place. But, with this decision, they haven't a chance.
Pic: another wind turbine overturned – but this one in Otterburn.
COMMENT THREAD
Thursday, 31 May 2012
Just before the heavens broke and it siled down with rain, I popped over to The Bradford Hole yesterday evening, the hole otherwise known as Westfield, or "Wastefield" as it is now called.
It is significant that the site is screened off by high hoardings, so pedestrians and passing motorists can't see the mess the council has made of their city. So "Occupy Westfield" have opened up one set of gates and created a viewing platform, so that people can see what has been done in their name.
That's the thing about the bubble – once they are trapped inside, what they see and say looks and sounds normal. They have no idea just how far from reality they have strayed.
Bloody revolution, however, rarely achieves anything other than bloody revolution (Arab Spring, anyone?). The way we make change happen is by disobedience and small acts of rebellion. There is no need for great sacrifice. We simply withdraw consent.
Then, a thousand small acts of defiance soon become a million. Millions over time makes us unmanageable – more makes us ungovernable. And if The Man wants to leave his symbols of powerlying by the roadside, there is an obvious response.
The Northumberland gremlins did the honours here.
Seven out of ten people who read the Tory Boy blog, who are sufficiently motivated to answer its fatuous surveys and who claim to be Tories (without having to offer any evidence), say that they would vote to leave the EU in a straight in/out referendum, if it was held tomorrow.
A High Court judge in London has rejected on appeal a plan by Sea Land and Power Ltd to erect four 344ft wind turbines near Hemsby, Great Yarmouth, on the fringe of the Norfolk Broads.
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