Thursday, 24 November 2011
Suitably Chestertonian
Thus my friend Ann Farmer likes to describe her approach, and to hope that he would have approved. I certainly do. As should you.
Very Much Back, Yes
Such was the reply of Margaret Thatcher when, as Leader of the Opposition, she was asked if she was trying to bring the National Front vote back to the Conservative Party. The full interview can still be read on the website of her Margaret Thatcher Foundation.
Bringing us to the recruitment of "volunteers" to run immigration next Wednesday, far too soon for any sort of checks to be run on them. Is David Cameron trying to bring the EDL back to the Conservative Party? Very much back, yes.
Bringing us to the recruitment of "volunteers" to run immigration next Wednesday, far too soon for any sort of checks to be run on them. Is David Cameron trying to bring the EDL back to the Conservative Party? Very much back, yes.
Wednesday, 23 November 2011
Steady Ed
Versus his utterly hysterical media critics.
On and on they drone that he is in crisis, that he is failing to make any headway, and so on. Yet the insolent voters consistently place his party ahead of one half of the Coalition while signalling that they intend to wipe out the other half as soon as the opportunity presents itself.
But that would mean ... well, it would mean that you did not have to be Tony Blair in order to win a General Election. Imagine that. They can't. They honestly, genuinely cannot imagine such a thing.
Something increasingly resembling a proper Labour Party, complete with Lord Glasman and everything that he represents looming large in the background and even the foreground, is consistently ahead of the Conservatives in the polls.
Meanwhile, the nearest thing to a Peter Hitchens Party, though in fact with a far higher and more classically Tory view of the economic and social role of the State, is consistently on par with the Lib Dems.
The universally Blairite, and therefore Cameronite and D-Milibandite, media have no idea how to cope. The best that they can do is report what they think ought to be happening, as if it actually were. But it is not. And it never will be.
On and on they drone that he is in crisis, that he is failing to make any headway, and so on. Yet the insolent voters consistently place his party ahead of one half of the Coalition while signalling that they intend to wipe out the other half as soon as the opportunity presents itself.
But that would mean ... well, it would mean that you did not have to be Tony Blair in order to win a General Election. Imagine that. They can't. They honestly, genuinely cannot imagine such a thing.
Something increasingly resembling a proper Labour Party, complete with Lord Glasman and everything that he represents looming large in the background and even the foreground, is consistently ahead of the Conservatives in the polls.
Meanwhile, the nearest thing to a Peter Hitchens Party, though in fact with a far higher and more classically Tory view of the economic and social role of the State, is consistently on par with the Lib Dems.
The universally Blairite, and therefore Cameronite and D-Milibandite, media have no idea how to cope. The best that they can do is report what they think ought to be happening, as if it actually were. But it is not. And it never will be.
Nothing To Lose But Our Chains
It is astonishing, and yet somehow not, that in 13 years, New Labour never legislated for John Smith's signature policy, namely that employment rights should begin on day one of employment and apply regardless of the number of hours worked. Ed Miliband should signal once and for all that, unlike his brother, he intends to give us the government that we would have had in those 13 years if Smith had lived, by legislating to create that fitting monument to the Great Man. Places like that consistently out-perform us. Have you ever been to Germany? We have had 30 years of the other way of doing things. Look where it has ended up.
Now that the Government has put on the agenda the deprivation of employment rights for which Tony Blair and David Miliband have always longed, Ed Miliband should renew John Smith's promise, and make his own to build on the statutory right of every worker to join a trade union and to have that trade union recognised for collective bargaining purposes, by giving every trade unionist so recognised the statutory right to take industrial action in pursuit of a legitimate grievance, including strike action, and including solidarity action of a clearly secondary character (such as a work to rule in support of a strike) within a single industry or corporation.
Intimately connected with all of this, he should promise to abolish all remaining vestiges of Compulsory Competitive Tendering, of the capping of councils, and of the power of central government to rule local services ultra vires, as well as to defend council housing wherever tenants or local communities wish to retain it.
We need a permanent body of MPs who could hold him and his successors to those commitments.
Now that the Government has put on the agenda the deprivation of employment rights for which Tony Blair and David Miliband have always longed, Ed Miliband should renew John Smith's promise, and make his own to build on the statutory right of every worker to join a trade union and to have that trade union recognised for collective bargaining purposes, by giving every trade unionist so recognised the statutory right to take industrial action in pursuit of a legitimate grievance, including strike action, and including solidarity action of a clearly secondary character (such as a work to rule in support of a strike) within a single industry or corporation.
Intimately connected with all of this, he should promise to abolish all remaining vestiges of Compulsory Competitive Tendering, of the capping of councils, and of the power of central government to rule local services ultra vires, as well as to defend council housing wherever tenants or local communities wish to retain it.
We need a permanent body of MPs who could hold him and his successors to those commitments.
The Murdoch Empire's Successor States
All right, so the resignation of James Murdoch turns out to be rather less than it might at first have appeared to be. But the fact that even this could happen demonstrates that we are in the last days of the Raj. We need to be clear as to what must come next.
The television license fee should be made optional, with as many adults as wished to pay it at any given address free to do so, including those who did not own a television set but who greatly valued, for example, Radio Four. The Trustees would then be elected by and from among the license-payers. Candidates would have to be sufficiently independent to qualify in principle for the remuneration panels of their local authorities. Each license-payer would vote for one, with the top two elected. The electoral areas would be Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland, and each of the nine English regions. The Chairman would be appointed by the relevant Secretary of State, with the approval of the relevant Select Committee. And the term of office would be four years.
One would not need to be a member of the Trust (i.e., a license-payer) to listen to or watch the BBC, just as one does not need to be a member of the National Trust to visit its properties, or a member of the Royal National Lifeboat Institution to be rescued by its boats. That model could certainly be applied to everything from the Press Complaints Commission to the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority, and arguably even to the Supreme Court, although in that case with only one candidate per region elected and with a vacancy arising only when a sitting member retired or died.
We need to ban any person or other interest from owning or controlling more than one national daily newspaper. To ban any person or other interest from owning or controlling more than one national weekly newspaper. To ban any person or other interest from owning or controlling more than one television station. To re-regionalise ITV under a combination of municipal and mutual ownership. And to apply that same model to Channel Four, but with central government replacing local government, subject to very strict parliamentary scrutiny.
The above model for the election of the BBC Trustees should be extended to the new Independent National Directors of Sky News, who should come into being entirely regardless of the ownership structure of BSkyB. Each Sky subscriber, or other adult who was registered to vote at an address with a Sky subscription and who chose to participate, would vote for one candidate. The requisite number would be elected at the end. Ideally, their Chairman, appointed by the Secretary of State with the approval of the Select Committee, would be Vince Cable. In any event, and not least in view of cross-subsidy, they might usefully double up as the hitherto most ineffective Independent National Directors of The Times and the Sunday Times. Alternatively, and perhaps preferably, the subscribers to those newspapers would by the same means elect their Independent National Directors.
Those two loss-making newspapers exist because the rules were bent double so that Rupert Murdoch could buy them in order, to his credit, to fund them out of his profitable interests. So they ought to be required to maintain balance. The publications granted parliamentary lobby access should be required to be balanced among themselves, even if not necessarily within themselves. Broadcasters having such access should be required to give regular airtime to all newspapers enjoying the same access.
The television license fee should be made optional, with as many adults as wished to pay it at any given address free to do so, including those who did not own a television set but who greatly valued, for example, Radio Four. The Trustees would then be elected by and from among the license-payers. Candidates would have to be sufficiently independent to qualify in principle for the remuneration panels of their local authorities. Each license-payer would vote for one, with the top two elected. The electoral areas would be Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland, and each of the nine English regions. The Chairman would be appointed by the relevant Secretary of State, with the approval of the relevant Select Committee. And the term of office would be four years.
One would not need to be a member of the Trust (i.e., a license-payer) to listen to or watch the BBC, just as one does not need to be a member of the National Trust to visit its properties, or a member of the Royal National Lifeboat Institution to be rescued by its boats. That model could certainly be applied to everything from the Press Complaints Commission to the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority, and arguably even to the Supreme Court, although in that case with only one candidate per region elected and with a vacancy arising only when a sitting member retired or died.
We need to ban any person or other interest from owning or controlling more than one national daily newspaper. To ban any person or other interest from owning or controlling more than one national weekly newspaper. To ban any person or other interest from owning or controlling more than one television station. To re-regionalise ITV under a combination of municipal and mutual ownership. And to apply that same model to Channel Four, but with central government replacing local government, subject to very strict parliamentary scrutiny.
The above model for the election of the BBC Trustees should be extended to the new Independent National Directors of Sky News, who should come into being entirely regardless of the ownership structure of BSkyB. Each Sky subscriber, or other adult who was registered to vote at an address with a Sky subscription and who chose to participate, would vote for one candidate. The requisite number would be elected at the end. Ideally, their Chairman, appointed by the Secretary of State with the approval of the Select Committee, would be Vince Cable. In any event, and not least in view of cross-subsidy, they might usefully double up as the hitherto most ineffective Independent National Directors of The Times and the Sunday Times. Alternatively, and perhaps preferably, the subscribers to those newspapers would by the same means elect their Independent National Directors.
Those two loss-making newspapers exist because the rules were bent double so that Rupert Murdoch could buy them in order, to his credit, to fund them out of his profitable interests. So they ought to be required to maintain balance. The publications granted parliamentary lobby access should be required to be balanced among themselves, even if not necessarily within themselves. Broadcasters having such access should be required to give regular airtime to all newspapers enjoying the same access.
The Questions Never Asked
So, who is going to take over in Yemen? The dissidents come in two forms, the unreconstructed Stalinists, and those who wanted the place to be run by Osama Bin Laden and Anwar al-Awlaki. One or the other will be taking over. There is no one else. That is just Yemen. What did you think that the place was like? And which is it going to be?
Meanwhile, who are these saintly souls for whom we are supposed to have such sympathy in Bahrain? What do they wish to preserve of a society which has least eight indigenous ethnic groups, including a small but very ancient and entrenched Jewish community which maintains the Gulf’s only synagogue and Jewish cemetery, and also including a community of black African descent, part of the East African diaspora in the East hardly known about by those very used to the West African diaspora in the West?
Around one fifth of the inhabitants of Bahrain is non-Muslim, and around half of that is Christian. The women’s headscarf is strictly optional. No one disputes that Bahraini Muslims are two-thirds Shi’ite. Correspondingly, no one disputes that Bahraini Muslims are one-third Sunni.
All legislation requires the approval of both Houses of Parliament, and, while one of those Houses is entirely appointed by the monarch (as in Britain or Canada), the other is entirely elected by universal suffrage. The Upper House, to which women are regularly appointed to make up for their dearth in the elected Lower House, includes a Jewish man and a Christian woman; the latter was the first woman ever to chair a Parliament in the Arab world.
The Ambassador to the United States is a Jewish woman, the first Jewish ambassador of any modern Arab state, although the third woman to be an Ambassador of Bahrain. She was previously an elected parliamentarian. Notably, she describes her Jewish identity as unconnected, either to the State of Israel, which Bahrain does not recognise, or to the Holocaust, of which she knew nothing until she was 14. Which part or parts of that do these demonstrators wish to preserve?
Her British higher education and British husband, as well as the fact that the synagogue brings in its rabbis from Britain, point to the very close ties indeed between that country and this. We installed the Al Khalifa in 1783, and they have done everything to keep up the link ever since. From Bahrain, via Qatar and the United Arab Emirates, to Oman is Britain’s natural and longstanding sphere of influence, as their rulers would and do tell you. It is beyond me why they are not in the Commonwealth.
I do not welcome the Saudi intervention in Bahrain, which, as the base of the United States Fifth Fleet, has not been subjected to any such incursion without at least American approval, if not American instruction. I have no wish to see a Wahhabisation of Bahraini Sunnism, since at present all of the above is perfectly acceptable even to the Salafi Members of Parliament.
But which part of it do the demonstrators wish to conserve? Do they wish to conserve any of it? Or do they wish to overthrow it in order to replace it with something else entirely? We have not asked. We never do. It is very high time that we did.
Meanwhile, who are these saintly souls for whom we are supposed to have such sympathy in Bahrain? What do they wish to preserve of a society which has least eight indigenous ethnic groups, including a small but very ancient and entrenched Jewish community which maintains the Gulf’s only synagogue and Jewish cemetery, and also including a community of black African descent, part of the East African diaspora in the East hardly known about by those very used to the West African diaspora in the West?
Around one fifth of the inhabitants of Bahrain is non-Muslim, and around half of that is Christian. The women’s headscarf is strictly optional. No one disputes that Bahraini Muslims are two-thirds Shi’ite. Correspondingly, no one disputes that Bahraini Muslims are one-third Sunni.
All legislation requires the approval of both Houses of Parliament, and, while one of those Houses is entirely appointed by the monarch (as in Britain or Canada), the other is entirely elected by universal suffrage. The Upper House, to which women are regularly appointed to make up for their dearth in the elected Lower House, includes a Jewish man and a Christian woman; the latter was the first woman ever to chair a Parliament in the Arab world.
The Ambassador to the United States is a Jewish woman, the first Jewish ambassador of any modern Arab state, although the third woman to be an Ambassador of Bahrain. She was previously an elected parliamentarian. Notably, she describes her Jewish identity as unconnected, either to the State of Israel, which Bahrain does not recognise, or to the Holocaust, of which she knew nothing until she was 14. Which part or parts of that do these demonstrators wish to preserve?
Her British higher education and British husband, as well as the fact that the synagogue brings in its rabbis from Britain, point to the very close ties indeed between that country and this. We installed the Al Khalifa in 1783, and they have done everything to keep up the link ever since. From Bahrain, via Qatar and the United Arab Emirates, to Oman is Britain’s natural and longstanding sphere of influence, as their rulers would and do tell you. It is beyond me why they are not in the Commonwealth.
I do not welcome the Saudi intervention in Bahrain, which, as the base of the United States Fifth Fleet, has not been subjected to any such incursion without at least American approval, if not American instruction. I have no wish to see a Wahhabisation of Bahraini Sunnism, since at present all of the above is perfectly acceptable even to the Salafi Members of Parliament.
But which part of it do the demonstrators wish to conserve? Do they wish to conserve any of it? Or do they wish to overthrow it in order to replace it with something else entirely? We have not asked. We never do. It is very high time that we did.
Tuesday, 22 November 2011
First At Antioch
Now just inside Turkey. But shown on some maps as being in Syria.
Fresh from being told that admission to the EU (I mean, why?) is pretty much never going to happen, the Islamist government of Turkey, a state founded on the bloody mass expulsion of two ancient Christian peoples, now commands the resignation of a President whose regime gives free water and electricity to churches and mosques alike, and whose capital is the seat of several Patriarchs of Antioch.
Fresh from being told that admission to the EU (I mean, why?) is pretty much never going to happen, the Islamist government of Turkey, a state founded on the bloody mass expulsion of two ancient Christian peoples, now commands the resignation of a President whose regime gives free water and electricity to churches and mosques alike, and whose capital is the seat of several Patriarchs of Antioch.
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