German Parliament Will Tell The Kids When To Come Home

To my way of thinking, it asks a question of the German Parliament and that question is simply 'are you sure you want to legislate away the democratic rights of the German people?.


Posted on The Tap Blog

Masquerade In Iran

Are Mousavi and his followers in Iran an actual reform movement? The pictures of student demonstrators in Tehran being brutalized by the basij and Iranian security forces present a heart-rending spectacle. But there is very little evidence that the label of "democratic reform," attached to Mousavi and many of his followers, is anything but a masquerade.


Posted on Joshuapundit

Sharia Rapidly Innundating The UK

Ever since the UK caved in and allowed sharia courts legal jurisdiction in civil matters, the face of used-to-be-Great Britain has changed remarkably, as sharia courts metasize and dispense Islamic justice behind closed doors. This is simply a green light for Islamists like the MCB to essentially create a state within a state.

Posted on Joshuapundit

"Cut IVF on the NHS" - and fake charities

"Fury as NHS trust says only women between 39.5 and 40 years old can have IVF", reports the Daily Mail. It's NICE and those unaccountable NHS managers again. Commenters on their site don't share this "fury", saying their NHS money should be for curing illness. Infertility Network UK do object. But then they are a fake charity. ...

Posted on The Purple Scorpion

This is what happens when you borrow too much

One of today's most interesting news items is hidden away in the business section on the Guardian's site. Yes, it does have one. It's for articles with numbers in them. But this is about far more than numbers. It is about hard choices to be made in government, a core concern of politics....

Posted on The Purple Scorpion

Brown downgrades penalties for expenses fiddlers

It will not save those already caught in the glare of the Daily Telegraph's headlights, but Gordon Brown, Harriet Harman et al. are working hard to ensure that any MP caught in future with his or her trotter in the trough will not have to face very much jail time, if any. That is if we have the chance to catch them at it.
Posted on The Huntsman.

The Moving Finger Wrote

Parliament has given us two fingers. Only an immediate General Election will now do. This Parliament has no moral authority to speak of and must be effaced before it does yet more harm. Meanwhile I am reminded of this from the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam:
Posted on The Huntsman.

Expenses: The Commons Exocets Itself

Thinking to sink HMS Telegraph, the House of Commons this morning fired off an Exocet missile in the form of publishing its own thoroughly bowdlerized version of their expenses. All they will have achieved thereby is many more hectares of newsprint and gigabytes of internet coverage as their attempt to cover up the extent of their larceny stands exposed.
Posted on The Huntsman.

Tory Dishonour

It sometimes seems to mere mortals that the Conservative Party does not actually WANT to win the next General Election. How else to explain Ken Clarke's freshest act of disloyalty to his party and his country in which he decided without so much as 'by your leave' to set Tory policy on the EU, notwithstanding that this is not his brief?
Posted on The Huntsman.

Up Close & Personal With The NHS

Having been laid low by a serious kidney infection (hence no blogging), I have had an 'up close & personal' look at the NHS after twelve years of Labour throwing money at it. The front-line bit remains a welcome safety net into which to fall at such times and I have naught but praise for doctors, nurses and ancillary staff.

Posted on The Huntsman.

British Embassies Assist Blackmail And The Break-Up Of Families Across The Globe

I was told by the Consul that the reasons that children from divorced and separated couples cannot now obtain British passports is to prevent international abduction from taking place.



Posted on The Tap Blog

Philip Stephens - the outdated oligarch

After an absence one forgets just how snootily anti-democratic Philip Stephens, the FT's political commentator, is. He talks today of Cameron sleepwalking towards Europe's exit. The core (unsubstantiated) argument is that rejecting the Lisbon treaty would put the UK in the departure lounge. On the way he calls UKIP "europhobic"....

Posted on The Purple Scorpion

Frank Field opposes Brown again

Brown looks likely to survive, but Paul Waugh points out that Frank Field has returned to the attack on him That's incidental to Field's main message that voters have to be taken seriously. His comment about what he calls "European politics" is uncharacteristically obscure. But it's hard to see the main parties addressing these voter concerns with anything but cant - or, as Richard would say, elastoplast.

Posted on The Purple Scorpion

Brown marooned as debates move on

The politically important debates are steaming away from Brown, leaving him marooned. On MPs' expenses and on the economy he is already part of the past. Debate has moved on from him. Doubtless Richard North's forthcoming book on our defeat in Iraq will also leave him floundering - but who will pick up that debate?

Posted on The Purple Scorpion

Eurozone Central Banks Spend Reserves

....... In Europe who on earth knows what is going on, as little of any significance gets reported. We are told, however, by Reuters that last week Eurozone Central Banks found it necessary to part company with 16 billion euros of reserves. That's nearly 1% of the total going west in a week. If that rate is maintained for a year, the effect will be to reduce reserves by about 50% - getting close to Euros 1 trillion in a year.

Posted on The Tap Blog

Mexican Flu Con Blankets Real News

Mexican swine fever is sure as hell filling the airwaves. This is most convenient for politicians especially those in the US who might have something to hide. According to the Wall Street Journal, the takeover of Merrill Lynch by Bank of America was carried out under duress. Bernanke and Paulson are now in court accused of illegally enforcing it.

Posted on The Tap Blog

Britain Betrays Its Gurkha Soldiers - And Itself

What kind of nation invites thousands of its avowed enemies to come and settle at the public expense while tossing its heroes out of the country? The Gurkhas are some of Britain's most valiant fighters, a elite and feared British force to be reckoned with. And now they've been betrayed by the country they were willing to die for.


Posted on Joshuapundit

Taliban Blocks Pakistani Army Supply Convoy, Holds Its Ground

The Taliban may have partially pulled out of Buner,but they show no signs of giving up any further ground. Today, a convoy with supplies for the Pakistani army was blocked and turned around by armed Taliban at a roadblock on the main highway. And the back story behind the pullout is even more interesting..





Posted on Joshuapundit

Pakistan Continues To Implode

Pakistan's deal with the Islamist devil is about to come apart, and so is the country. There are interesting parallels with Iran 1979 here.If the Taliban takes over or they're in a position to interdict the NATO supply lines into Afghanistan, NATO's war there may be over.givng way to another failed state, this time with nukes and ICBMs....






Posted on Joshuapundit

The Ebbing Tide; Pope Benedict Dons A Kefiyah

Pope Benedict gave an audience to a group of Palestinians in Rome yesterday, and accepted and wore a keffiyah, a symbol of Palestinian 'resistance' from them. This is an ongoing pattern, a conscious decision the Pope made some time ago to avoid a moral battle he knows is inevitable for political expediency...rather like Pius XII in the 1930's


Posted on Joshuapundit

Euro About To Receive Market Kicking

I've been blogging a while, predicting various market moves. My favourite one of these is undoubtedly the sinking value of the Euro versus all other currencies. The last two months have seen the Euro moving the other way, rising a little against the dollar. But the underlying weakness of the Euro is about to send it reeling.

Posted on The Tap Blog

Euro Predicted To Melt In The Crash

Following the movements of markets is currently a challenge, it might be said. Making sense of the world's economy since around 2000 has been very hard. Years of irrational exuberance with record high valuations for stocks and commodities has turned into a long slow deflationary spiral downwards.

Posted on The Tap Blog

Where The Huntsman leads, the hounds follow

Nigh on two years ago I first wrote, in indignation, of the wretched state of affairs concerning MPs expenses. Whilst not the first so to do but well before the bandwagon hove into view, I proposed that MPs expenses must be place in full, unexpurgated, unredacted beauty online as are those of MSPs by the Scottish Parliament. I also proposed some swingeing prison sentences for those who cheated. I now recognise my error.

Posted on The Huntsman.

EUThermopylae

Once again the future of Europe hangs in the balance. And once again key events are taking place in the tiny Czech Republic. A country of 10 million people, The Czech Republic has the power to drive a second nail into the Lisbon Treaty's coffin.

Posted on The Tap Blog

G20 triumph - of spin over substance

Until yesterday one thing was clear - never in the field of macro economics has so much been owed by so many because of so few. After the stage managed production brought to us via a media feeding frenzy in east London at the G20 summit, we could offer a whole new range of corruptions of the historic words by Winston Churchill...

Posted on Tony Sharp.

Scandal of MPs' expenses worsens

Jacqui Smith's deliberate ransacking of the public purse as detailed in her expenses claims is more morally repugnant than her husband's inclusion of two adult films by mistake. The second home claims by supposed left winger Harry Cohen are also impossible to defend on any moral grounds. If we are going to have venal monkeys, let us at least pay them peanuts.

Posted on The Purple Scorpion

Collapsing in his internal contradictions

Commentators continue to insist that an EU bailout of the weaker eurozone countries would be economically and politically possible. This blog continues to disagree. The latest is Charles Grant, who probably aimed to make a case for other EU countries bailing out eurozone members in danger of defaulting, concentrating on Greece, but in fact puts a compelling financial and economic argument why no one should lend Greece a bean.

Posted on The Purple Scorpion

Splitting the anti-EU vote

Members of the imploding UKIP are becoming fixated on the activities of the splinter UK First Party, which will contest the European elections. They will not be UKIP's main opponents. We look at Libertas, the BNP, and the new No2EU - Yes to Democracy against the background of a new opinion poll on attitudes to the EU.

Posted on The Purple Scorpion

The Heartland amateurs

In one respect, the 2009 International Conference on Climate Change on the theme Global Warming: was it ever a crisis? was a failure. Admirable as the contributions were, eminent as the speakers may have been, the message just has not got out. It's no good just blaming the mainstream media. The organisers have got to do better next year. ...

Posted on The Purple Scorpion

Economic Chaos Descends Over Europe

Any thought that the EU will be able to pull itself out the economic hole it has created should be put to one side. The symptoms of total chaos are now starkly apparent, as no one has any idea whose responsibility it is to deal with the mess. If it wasn't so serious, it would be comic. The world will soon see that Europe is headed for the abyss and no one anywhere will be in any position to stop it.

Posted on The Tap Blog

The HBOS rescue in pictures

The FT's Westminster blog has a cracking pictorial representation of the HBOS 'rescue'. Enjoy!




Posted on The Purple Scorpion

America Will Have To Bail Out Europe

The discussion about the so-called 'solvent' and 'creditworthy' countries of Europe bailing out the insolvent countries has not entered into reality as yet. The trouble is the scale of the problem. Not only are Ireland, Greece, Italy, Portugal, Spain in severe difficulties. So too are Poland, Hungary, Czech Republic and Romania from the bigger East European countries, as well as Latvia, Estonia, Lithuania, not to mention Ukraine.

Posted on The Tap Blog

HBOS in political context

It's pretty clear what went on at HBOS now. The bankers wanted to be left alone to make lots of money. Government was happy with this because they were getting significant tax revenue from the banks to finance state spending. At HBOS Paul Moore was telling the hierarchy things they didn't want to hear ....

Posted on The Purple Scorpion

The Dollar Is The Safest Place For Your Money

Obama undestands that Bush's spending boom has to end. He has a natural air of authority, a good brain and a common sense approach to matters economic - Reuters - President Barack Obama pledged on Monday to cut the ballooning budget deficit in half over the next four years.

Posted on The Tap Blog

More to life than economics

Usually it's political commentators who can be criticised for ignoring economics. Numbers? Gracious, they don't affect anything. Anyway, I might have to think hard. Pass the smelling salts. But this morning both Wolfgang Munchau and Armageddon Evans-Pritchard have interesting economic angles yet stop short of the politics.

Posted on The Purple Scorpion

Hyperinflation And Phantom Finance

The world is going mad. The gold price briefly touches $1000 yesterday, and yet demand for the metal is collapsing, other than that is, in Gold Exchange Traded Funds (ETFs), which claim to hold tonnes of the metal in warehouses of unspecified location. Yet they refuse to permit anyone, even their own auditors, to see any real metal. The reason the ETFs .... claim that people should be buying phantom gold is the threat from a sister phantom - 'hyperinflation'.

Posted on The Tap Blog

Germany In Chaos Over Saving The Euro

Germany's finance minister said Germany might consider bailing out smaller European nations. Germany's Finance Minister Peer Steinbrueck described the suggestion that the eurozone could fall apart as "totally absurd" and promised that if other member states got into trouble, "we will show ourselves to be capable of acting"

Posted on The Tap Blog

Obama Offers Gaza Palestinians A Home In The USA

I met an American friend last night who was complaining that extraordinary measures being put into effect by President Barack Obama were not being given any news coverage. He told me that Obama had opened the doors to the whole population of Gaza offering them a home in the USA. That's big news. I asked him for a link. He sent me the below....


Posted on The Tap Blog

Gold At $500 Within 6 Months

Anyone following the great gold boom stories running throughout all media - sufficiently to convince most ordinary folk that gold is in huge demand, might be surprised to hear by exactly how much gold demand has increased. Exchange Traded Funds are buying up 1000's of tonnes of gold, we are told, and storing it away for their clients. So are you sitting down, ready to hear how much more gold has been sold in 2008?

Posted on The Tap Blog

Chickens coming home to roost at HBOS

A second whistleblower who used to work in the HBOS risk control function has appeared, claiming that it was downgraded after Jo Dawson took over. And Andy Hornby has been caught out in a big lie. He claimed he'd reduced mortgage exposure deliberately. Hm, not what he said at the time.

Posted on The Purple Scorpion