Gore 2008?

Speculation grows that defeated Presidential candidate, Al Gore, will run again in 2008. His key campaign issue – climate change – is a massive issue and neither Barack Hussein Obama nor Hillary Clinton seems to have pulled clear yet in the race for the Democratic Party’s nomination.

This week Gore won a primary poll in Arizona despite having not yet declared his candidacy. Would the Democrats really plump (and plump is the right word for Gore) for another Gore candidacy ahead of the charisma of Obama or Clinton?

Mass emigration – what’s to stop them?

Reports in today’s newspapers are highlighting the highest numbers of emigration from Britain since World War I.  The reasons given are ones that we can all predict.

I used to look on emigrants as defeatist people who are giving up on Britain in the vain hope that the grass is greener elsewhere in the world.  I always lazily assumed that Britain had much to recommend it to those already here and those interested in coming, and indeed I think that relatively speaking it is still one of the best places to live in the world. 

Increasingly I now wonder whether we really are such a great place.  Mass emigration is targeting Australia (with 1.3 million British emigrants), Spain (761,000 of them), America (678,000), New Zealand and even France.  Having traveled extensively in all those countries I can see why the lure of a new life abroad is strong.  Perhaps the famous quotation attributed to Cecil Rhodes, “remember that you are an Englishman, and have consequently won first prize in the lottery of life” no longer applies.

All this is something of which Tony Blair’s Labour Party should be ashamed.  It is their government which has presided over the era in which people have been driven abroad. 

So here’s my question.  As I said, I have previously unquestioningly accepted the default position that to stay in Britain is the best option, but now am less sure.  What reasons can readers give for wanting to stay here until retirement and beyond?

FedEx v Federal Government

Newt Gingrich, former Speaker of the US House of Representatives, explains the difference between FedEx and the Federal Government. It is a 3 minute clip and very worthwhile watching.

Hurrah for the Rolling Stones!

That earnest voice of impartiality and fairness, the BBC, reports that the Rolling Stones broke the law again. No, they didn’t take drugs as they famously did in the 1960s – the smoked on stage during their concert last night.

Neither the Rolling Stones nor the venue, the O2 Arena, will be fined as Greenwich Council said it was satisfied that the incident was a one-off. One of the men quasi-criminalised for enjoying a fag was Keith Richards who smoked at Hampden Park last year.

Is it not time that this absurd ban was repealed or that the Tories announced they would repeal the smoking ban?

Boris Johnson – a member of the hard Tory right?

Has anyone else seen the supposedly devastating exposé that Gordon Brown’s pals at Compass have cobbled together?  I say exposé but of course, seeing as everything they uncovered was in the public domain it should come as no surprise that Boris held some of these views.  The fact that the left are resorting to publishing this now and attempting to label him “a type of Norman Tebbit in a clown’s uniform” suggests they really are scared of his candidacy getting past the upcoming selection stage.

I think they are making a mistake here.  On the one hand they want is to believe that Boris is a buffoon, a jester, a part-time politico who wouldn’t take Ken’s job (as they see the mayoralty) seriously, and then on the other give him the credibility of identifying him as the biggest threat to London since the Blitz.  That’s some achievement for a joke! 

Anyway, I read their report and one thing struck me.  As I read down their list of devastatingly embarrassing quotes I found myself nodding in agreement with many of them.  He’s not a card-carrying member of the far right in any sense other than that which a card-carrying member of the far left would recognise. 

Read the report for the full effect, but here are some I’ve chosen. 

On opposing Kyoto: 

“But of all the tough-guy acts that Bush has performed in his first few months, of all the pieces of exuberant Reaganism, nothing has so intoxicated the world with hate as his decision to scrumple up the Kyoto protocol and use it for putting practice in the White House… Because we still need a rich, confident America; not just to provide the cash for the global military leadership that the United States has to give from the Gulf to Kosovo, but also to keep the world economy moving… If America were to meet its Kyoto targets now, it would require a cut of 30 per cent in emissions, and how, exactly, is that supposed to work in the current economic downturn… It would exacerbate the recession, and when Bush says no, he is doing what is right not just for America but for the world.”

Tick! 

On supporting nuclear power: 

“There is now a growing agreement that for the first time in a quarter of a century we must build nuclear reactors; there can be argument about how many, but they must be a part of the solution to our increasing energy problems… We need an alternative, and one that doesn’t involve crucifying our landscape with wind farms which, even when they are in motion, would barely pull the skin off a rice pudding.”

Tick! 

Is a fanatical Thatcherite: 

“Mrs Thatcher pioneered a revolution that was imitated in one way or another, around the world.”

Tick! 

On tackling inequality: 

“…material inequality is inevitable, and that trouble comes from too zealous an attempt to change this”.

Tick! 

On hunting: 

“I will never vote to ban hunting. It is a piece of spite that has nothing to do with animal welfare, and everything to do with Blair’s manipulation of rank-and-file Labour chippiness and class hatred.”

Tick! 

On Islam: 

“When is Little Britain going to do a sketch, starring Matt Lucas as one of the virgins? Islam will only be truly acculturated to our way of life when you could expect a Bradford audience to roll in the aisles at Monty Python’s Life of Mohammed.”

Tick! 

On Liberal Democrats:

“…there is a third group, a minority, but a minority that possesses a characteristic human psychological deformity. They can’t stand the pettiness of intellectual consistency. They want it all ways, and are capable of holding mutually contradictory positions at once. There policy on cake is pro-having it and pro-eating it, and they need a party that reflects them and their politically schizophrenic personalities.”

Tick! 

On Polly Toynbee: 

“She incarnates all the nannying, high-taxing, high-spending schoolmarminess of Blair’s Britian. She is the defender and friend of everyone whose non-job has ever been advertised in the Guardian appointments page… Polly is the high priestess of our paranoid, mollycoddled, risk-averse, airbagged, booster-seated culture of political correctness and ‘elf’n’safety fascism.”

Tick! 

On those running the BBC: 

“…former crypto communists…”

Tick!  Tick!  Tick!  Tick!

Mike Deaver RIP – Reagan’s imagemaker dies

 

Mike Deaver, who I had the privilege of meeting briefly a few years ago has passed away on Saturday.

He was a key advisor to Ronald Reagan, both as Governor of California and President. Some people say he made Ronald Reagan, he says Reagan made him and ”I’ve always said the only thing I did is light him well.”

There is no doubt however he was a key influence on Reagan’s White House, one of the troika ( the others being Ed Messe and James Baker.)  Memorably he was responsible for the striking visuals that complimented many Reagan speeches, for example the Pointe du Hoc speech    

My two favourite Mike Deaver stories are  

One of his [Deaver's] first jobs was working for California Republican George Murphy, a former actor, in his 1964 U.S. Senate campaign against Democrat Pierre Salinger, President Kennedy’s former press secretary. To present Salinger in his worst light, Deaver followed him to many a campaign stop, offering him a cigar as he stepped out of his car. Deaver later recalled that Salinger would stick the cigar in his mouth, giving photographers a ready shot of a fat cat – hardly the man-of-the-people portrait a Democrat might prefer.

and 

Leslie Stahl, then the CBS White House correspondent, tells the often repeated story of writing what she considered a scathing report about budget cuts made by the Reagan administration. Stahl came to the White House the next morning expecting to be berated by White House officials. Instead she was greeted with compliments for her report.Finally, Stahl confronted a Deaver deputy who shed light on her bewilderment. “No one heard what you had to say in that piece,” Stahl was told. “They just saw the pictures.” And in those pictures, Reagan was glowing.

Here are a few links to obituaries of Mike Deaver.

LA Times 

Human Events

Washington Times

American Spectator

NewsBlaze

Old school protestors vs. Eco-Warriors

There are two interesting pieces about the Heathrow protestors in today’s newspapers well worth comparing and contrasting.

Writing for The Guardian we have everybody’s favourite eco-warrior George Monbiot.  Writing for The Times we have old Marxist Mick Hume. 

The interest comes from the markedly different descriptions the writers have of their involvement in political protest movements, and the diverse motivations that each had for them.  Unsurprisingly Monbiot comes across as an elitist dictator, presuming to know what is good for the rest of us, whereas Hume portrays a proper sense of history and solidarity with serious protest movements. 

Monbiot, as you would expect, sings the praises of his fellow protestors.  Describing the set-up of the camp he says: 

…in other respects it was better organised, more democratic and more disciplined than any I have seen before. It drew on the protests of the 1990s but introduced two new elements: much better logistics and a model of popular democracy imported from Latin America.

All the facilities that 1,500 people would need – including running water, sanitation, hot food twice a day, banks of computers and walkie-talkies, stage lighting, sound systems, even a cinema – were set up in a few hours on unfamiliar ground, in the teeth of police blockades. A system of affinity groups and neighbourhoods, feeding their decisions upwards to general meetings, permitted a genuine participatory democracy of the kind that you will never encounter in British public life. The actions themselves were disciplined and remained non-violent, even when the police got heavy. I left the camp on Sunday evening convinced that a new political movement has been born.

Hume, a veteran of direct action alongside striking miners and others in the 1980s pours cold water on Monbiot’s warm praise: 

…I feel obliged to point out that young eco-protester puppies today don’t know they are born, are degrading the good name of direct action, and would not know a police state if they found one in their muesli.

The news has been full of spokespersons from the Camp for Climate Action at Heathrow comparing their campaign of direct action with noble struggles of the past. One summed up the camp’s aims as being “to show it’s possible and pleasurable to live sustainably” (the joys of the composting toilet), and “to show that non-violent direct action works. Civil disobedience has in the past led to things like black people getting the vote.”

Grow up and get an education. The campaign against Heathrow expansion bears no comparison to those that led to “things like black people getting the vote”. Direct action is neither good nor bad in principle. It is just a tactic, used by all manner of protest movements. What matters most are the political aims and outlook informing the protests.

Hume goes further, contrasting Monbiot’s egotistical moral posturing with the genuine suffering of past protestors: 

In the past, direct action was employed by people fighting to defend their own interests – working people struggling for jobs and better pay, women demanding the vote, black people seeking civil rights. The pursuit of self-interest was the driving force for political change. Others such as we on the Left supported their struggles, but we acted in solidarity, not as self-appointed substitutes for the miners or disadvantaged minorities.

Today, by contrast, to take political action in your own interests seems frowned upon as greedy, even sleazy. Instead, the Heathrow protesters insist that they are acting altruistically “on behalf of” others, speaking for the “voiceless” – the poor of the developing world, unborn generations, or simply the planet.

Finally Hume contrasts Monbiot’s moans about the police getting “heavy” with the genuine violence that old school direct action types (and some more recent examples) have been forced to face: 

Yet such are the rising levels of self-deluded preciousness among the protesters that some seem to believe they were subjected to historic levels of police oppression, because some officers “acted aggressively”. They might care to look at what happened in the past when protests challenged the Establishment – the direct action did not remain nonviolent for long once the riot police started swinging. By contrast, eco-protests are now so mainstream and respectable that they are treated with kid gloves rather than the old iron fist. The only ones to receive that treatment in recent years were the pro-hunting protesters outside Parliament – they were the “wrong” sort of conservationists.

I may not have agreed with every cause Hume marched for in his youth, however I do know which set of protestors I admire the most.

BBC panders to extremist voices again

I found an interesting story on the Daily Mail’s website today.

It seems that the BBC was going to start the newest series of their popular medical drama Casualty with a bang, a terrorist bang to be precise.  Holby City Accident & Emergency was going to be shown dealing with the aftermath of an Islamist terror attack.   And then the bureacrats got involved…

Now the bomb is going to be set off by animal rights extremists instead.

The BBC has previous as far as this politically correct view of terrorism is concerned.  Their otherwise excellent MI5-based drama series, Spooks, has been forced to mention Islamic extremism, but has also portrayed Evangelical Christians, shady civil servants, environmental activists and pro-life campaigners as serious British terror threats.  Indeed in one infamous double-bill which did appear to involve an Islamic plot the terrorists eventually turned out to be Mossad agents!

The BBC should stop pandering to self-appointed voices promoting extremism under the guise of claiming to represent minority communities.  Every time a programme is censored and a nonsensical story line is employed to assuage the anger of a vocal campaign group, especially one which then points the finger at our partners in the Global War on Terror, the BBC’s claims to impartiality are damaged and public service broadcasting once more becomes a political tool.

Moral outrage in politics

One of Morton Blackwell’s Laws of the Public Policy Process is:

“Moral outrage is the most powerful motivating force in politics”.

It’s therefore with fascination that we learn that the Leader of Australia’s Labor Party, Kevin Rudd, was forced to admit that he paid a visit to a strip club during a boozy night out in New York in 2003.

Australians are still often perceived in Britain as beer-swilling, belching Bruces and Sheilas. So will Kevin Rudd’s admission, forced out of him against his will, harm his campaign? The conservative Prime Minister of Australia, John Howard, will clearly be hoping so as he struggles in the polls in part because of his clear support for President Bush.

Richard Littlejohn on the British ‘Residents’ of Guantanamo Bay

Richard Littlejohn, an acquired taste sometimes too strong even for some authors of this blog, nevertheless has a habit of hitting the nail squarely on the head from time to time.  In his latest piece for The Daily Mail (“The Infamous Five should be left to rot in Guantanamo Bay” – http://http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/columnists/columnists.html?in_article_id=474351&in_page_id=1772&in_author_id=322“) he accurately sums up the thoughts of many in Britain by reviewing the 5 cases in question. 

It’s well worth a read but here’s one example:

 “Take Shaker Aamer, for instance. He’s a Saudi national who came to the UK in 1996. When he was arrested he was working for a “charity” in Jelalabad. According to his lawyer, the ubiquitous Clive Stafford Smith, Aamer went to Pakistan and then Afghanistan in 2001 to look for work after failing to find a job in the UK.  

“As you do. There you are, sitting in a council house in Birmingham, scouring the “sits vac” column of the Evening Mail. Since there’s nothing suited to your talents, you decide you might as well up sticks and try your luck in Afghanistan.  

“Of course, it’s not unknown for people to emigrate in search of a better life. Australia, New Zealand and the U.S. are popular destinations. But how many conclude that the grass is greener in Afghanistan? At the time, the country was being ruled by the Taliban. Perhaps he hoped to get a job pushing walls on top of adulterous wives or beheading infidels.  

“Just for the record, when Aamer shipped up in Afghanistan, the official rate of unemployment in Kabul was 70 per cent.”