These fragments...

Her divisiveness is far from being the only reason Thatcher should not get a State funeral

2011-12-22T23:28:00.000-08:00

Her divisiveness is far from being the only reason Thatcher should not get a State funeral

Alda Kalda memories of June 17th

2011-06-17T11:48:00.001-07:00

aldakalda: I remember as a teenager when I came to Iceland during the summers and was totally in awe of the June 17... http://fb.me/10qB8529L Original Tweet: http://twitter.com/aldakalda/status/81793355272568832 Sent via TweetDeck (www.tweetdeck.com)

Work Program will make poor poorer

2011-06-17T11:13:00.001-07:00

D_Blanchflower: How the “Work Programme” could make the poor poorer. http://bit.ly/jpsEJU Original Tweet: http://twitter.com/D_Blanchflower/status/81786117287972864 Sent via TweetDeck (www.tweetdeck.com)

Tax Justice Network: BBC explains tax scam in UK's Private Finance Initiative

2011-06-15T03:56:00.000-07:00

Tax Justice Network: BBC explains tax scam in UK's Private Finance Initiative

NPthinking: Is free market capitalism fatally flawed?

2011-06-12T20:04:00.000-07:00

NPthinking: Is free market capitalism fatally flawed?: "(605 words) While the OECD (The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) is saying that major economies across the worl..."

New Economic Perspectives: Control Fraud and the Irish Banking Crisis

2011-06-12T14:50:00.000-07:00

New Economic Perspectives: Control Fraud and the Irish Banking Crisis: "By William K. Black This is part of a continuing series of articles on the European crises of the core and periphery. This column focuses..."

Tax Justice Network: The IMF Says Tax Havens Are A Danger To Society

2011-06-11T07:47:00.000-07:00

Tax Justice Network: The IMF Says Tax Havens Are A Danger To Society

Chapter 70

2010-01-26T12:27:00.001-08:00

My words are easy to understand and easy to perform,

Yet no man under heaven knows them or practices them,

My words have ancient beginnings.
My actions are disciplined.
Because men do not understand, they have no knowledge of me.

Those that know me are few;
Those that abuse me are honoured.
Therefore the sage wears rough sleepers clothing and wears the jewel in his heart.

Taken from Lao Tsu - Tao Te Ching - Wildwood House, 1973, trans Gia-fu Feng and Jane English.

These Sabbath Fragments

2010-01-23T09:33:00.000-08:00

Fragment One

This week polling organisations met to discuss research and methodolgy for the 2010 General Election. (source The Guardian)

A straw poll of those present gave the following average assessment:

A Conservative minority government 10 short of a majority.

Cons 316 (294-7)
Lab 251 (261-6)
LDem 53 (49-51)
Oth 12 (12-16)
NIre 18 (18)

Figures in brackets are my call from two weeks ago, see below.

Fragment Two

The Curious case of The Tanking Campaign continues unabated. This weekend sees the Tories falling out over prison ships, a misguided launch of a misguided educational policy, a bizarre launch of a Broken 'Doncaster' Britain focussed on a dysfunctional married family and an airbrushed poster campaign that saw Tories hiring a new brand manager.

Fragment Three

Labour united behind Gordon Brown despite (or because of) the 'Snowflake' putsch by Tweedledumb and Tweedledumber.

Will Straw gave an impassioned defence of his father, Jack, and was honest as only young people can be.

Fragment Four

The Civil Service union, the First Division, showing how its members are dysfunctional and not up to the job.

Time for a US style changing of the guard after every election.

Fragment Five

The extra-ordinary launch of Open Data.gov paving the way for a wholly different way of looking at Britain.

Fragment Six

The loss of Ted Kennedy's Senate seat to a male nude model and spokesperson for the Republican Tea Party movement.

This concentrated Democrat minds, with mid-term elections in November, sufficiently to see Geithner and Sumers sidelined as Obama took on the Banks with a Tobin Tax in view.

"Fire and Ice" from 'Love Poems' by Robert Frost

2010-01-12T20:58:00.001-08:00

Some say the world will end in Fire

Some say in Ice

From what I've tasted of desire

I hold with those who hold with fire

But if it had to punish twice

I think I know enough of hate

To say that for destruction ice

Is also great

And would suffice

These Sabbath Fragments

2010-01-09T08:50:00.001-08:00

This is a new feature: it will appear one hour after sunset on Saturday each week.

Fragment one

The Tory Manifesto Launch was an unmitigated disaster. 3 out of 10

Fragment two

Cameron is poor under pressure.

Fragment three

Tory £34-37 billion budget shortfall

Fragment four

Steve Hilton was the best thing going for them. Rather Steve than that disgraceful bully Coulson. The Tories really are nasty. Coulson is destabalising Central Office.

Fragment five

Iain Dale predictions on general election

Tories 331 Labour 216 LDem 69 PCymru 5 SNP 7 Green 1 Others 3 NIreland 18

My predictions

Cons 294-7 Lab 261-6 LDem 49-51 PCymru 4-5 SNP 6-9 Others 2

Dale gives a Majority of Six (6) to the Tories.

After last week's fiasco, I call a Tory minority. Yet the game is only just afoot. Labour can win this campaign.

Transparent Tories

2010-01-07T18:51:00.001-08:00

The Tories have got off to an even more shaky start to 2010 than Labour.

Cameron's much vaunted policy launch fell apart at the seams. Cameron himself didn't understand his own flagship married tax policy. So badly did he get it wrong he had to issue a written clarification contradicting his earlier pronouncement.

Tory headquarters staff are falling out amongst themselves and Steve Hilton, Cameron's top strategist, is being undermined by colleagues.
Even the Tory press were less than impressed and the Spectator was withering about Cameron's emperor without any policy clothing. Tory bloggers were underwealmed by Cameron's Tory lite agenda.

Alistair Darling issued a weighty tome proving the Tories £37 billion budgetary shortfall. While Peter Mandleson gave a magisterial presentation of government policy. Brown was brilliant at PMQs.

You would be forgiven for not noticing - it's all out there on the internet - because of the failed coup de l'épiphanie.

Dork Miliband marched his band of ragtag Blairites up to the top of the ramparts only to leave them halfway up or down while he hid himself from view.

This is the third (fourth?) time the Grand Old Dork of Miliband has left his cronies in the lurch.

If Tweedledumb and Tweedledumber hadn't been led astray by the Grand Dork, the Tories would have looked pretty disorganised and stupid by Wednesday night.

The benighted and soon to be dropped Steve Hilton is a great advocate of 'transparency'. Cameron's tory lite programme for opposition was so emptily transparent only the Grand Dork saved Tory blushes.

Tories 2 (o.g.) Labour 2 (o.g.)

Damp Squib or Pants on fire

2010-01-06T22:33:00.001-08:00

Geoff Hoon and Patricia Hewitt may have scuppered a snap March election.

I gather that on 28.01.10, the UK officially exits from recession. It would seem that growth is better than expected, the UK is better placed than France and Germany and UK employment is up and unemployment amongst the lowest in the OECD!

MPs can expect an earful from party members, supporters and constituency activists, this weekend if they haven't already.

One midland agent groaned that the failed Epiphany Putsch would cost 3-4% at the general election and the difference between a Labour or Conservative minority.

He also said that any gains in motivating activists and supporters had been put back several months.

Grassroots Labour hates this kind of Westminster Village navel gazing.

Hoon and Hewitt are like the failed Nigerian plane bomber. All they succeeded in doing was setting their pants on fire.

While David Miliband's insipid late statement merely confirmed himself as the Michael Portillo of New Labour.

Oh well, nose to the grindstone and back to where we were last October.

Death Wish 2010

2010-01-05T20:08:00.001-08:00

I read with growing despair the morons in the Labour Party who seek a change of leadership 16 weeks before a General Election. They have a death wish.

These ministers, backbenchers, onceweres, neverweres and neverwillbes ignore, forget or have never understood, we live in a parliamentary democracy.

They have watched too much TV and too much American TV. We-do-not-live-in-a-West-Wing-presidential-system. We do NOT vote for a PM.

We vote for a candidate to be our MP and, usually the party he or she represents.

Blair didn't win three elections, the Labour Party did. If Blair had continued with that moron, Alan Milburn, Labour would have lost the 2005 election.

It is the Labour Party - not Gordon Brown who will win or lose the 2010 election.

Those who want Labour to lose will spread rumours that we must get rid of Gordon. Poor benighted fools like Clarke, Milburn and et alia want Labour to lose.

The choice is simple Labour or Tory - who leads is irrelevant.

Tessa Jowell, who would have thrown herself in front of a bus - stupid woman - to save St Tony of Basra, should walk the plank.

The baby boomers from Charles Clarke to Tessa Jowell passing through the semi-detatched Frank Field have failed us all.

Our choice is Labour defender of the poor, the working class and aspirant middle class or Tory defender of the non-doms, the tax avoiders, the bankers and those with off shore accounts and the Trustafarians.

The choice is yours. I've made my choice - I vote Labour for fairer Britain.

Iceland and fair play

2010-01-05T12:27:00.001-08:00

The English have made much about notions of fair play. It's just not cricket is an expression that could only have emerged on the playing fields of Eton.

The loadsamoney culture initiated by Thatcher and, after John Major's doomed attempt to return to gentler and fairer social values, anchored by Blair's venal love of excessive wealth forever destroyed notions of fairness in English society.

Nowhere is this clearer in the Holland and UK's treatment of Iceland over the Icesave debacle.

There are some 320,000 Icelanders, close to 67 million British and 17 million Dutch. Iceland's GDP some $16 billion, the UK GDP some $2.8 trillion, Holland approx $900 billion GDP.

The laid back, pot smoking, Dutch and the fairplay Cool Britannia - combined GDP $3.7 trillion and combined population 84 million are bullying, bankrupting and robbing some 320,000 with a GDP of $16 billion.

Laid back Dutch? Fairplay Cool Britannia?

Grasping, venal, cheapskates more like - Holland and the UK are demanding all Icelandic people pay one-third of their GDP for a civil banking debt run up by criminal fraudsters aided and abetted by lax regulatory authorities in Holland and the UK!

Mother Jones, the brilliant, independent, US magazine pointed out it is as if all American people owed Holland and the UK some $4.2 trillion. As if all Brits owed one country $900 billion and the Dutch $300 billion.

The role of the EU and IMF in enforcing a civil banking debt, created by criminal fraudsters and allowed by criminal neglect by lax regulatory authorities is an international disgrace.

The Dutch, the British, the EU and the IMF hang your heads in shame. Revisit this disgraceful treatment of 320,000 people and send the Icelandic bankers, most living in luxury as non-doms in the UK and other EU countries, to prison.

Dementia and the General Election 2010 - Two

2010-01-04T22:18:00.001-08:00

It is short term memory loss that is the bummer. Earlier, this morning, afternoon, evening, yesterday, the day before are concepts of time I struggle with. If someone tells me a list of facts, I lose facts one and two. A constant diary and a smart phone help enormously. I have a mind map of sites, mostly numbered and colour coded that acts as surrogate short and medium term memory aids. So far long term memory - last year plus is okay.

The strangest feature of it all is living in a perpetual present. A magical realm where the tradition of the new is constantly renewed. Yet still I can go half a dozen times into the kitchen before I remember to make that cup of tea or coffee.

There is no medication to help and I am not too far gone to merit diagnosis and treatment - what little there is available. The one thing that helps enormously is venesection, removal of a pint or litre of blood. That gives me a month of increased lucidity.

Yet I have that for another medical condition and it is not recognised for dementia treatment.

So I get it once or twice a year rather than the 6 or 8 times that would benefit me.

Research into dementia is a Cinderella service, the Ugly sisters of Cancer and Heart Disease get the vast bulk of research funding. Treatment is primarily for when the condition has deteriorated dramatically.

I get tea and sympathy and encouragement to do word games. Once I could do the Times or Telegraph cryptic crosswords in under an hour, today I struggle to get half a dozen clues a day.

The government needs for the NHS and University Research Institutes to develop medication and other treatments for those in the earliest stages of dementia.

It will come to late for me, the funding isn't there, but more monies are needed to help a rapidly aging society. That requires a political commitment.

Dementia and General Election 2010 - Part One

2010-01-04T20:40:00.001-08:00

The Alzheimers Society wants to put dementia research, treatment and care at the heart of this year's General Election Campaign. I support this initiative wholeheartedly.

I must declare an interest: I am suffering from the early effects of vascular dementia, a by product of polycythemia vera - a bone marrow disease. My prognosis is good 9-13 years and I am in touch with someone in Oxford, a Classics specialist, who has managed her condition for some 15 years.

A very fine person, the talented blogger and wit, Ron Broxted of Independent Minds, once messaged me "there's nothing wrong with your mind". It was kind of him and something I needed to hear at that time.

Dementia afflicts different people in different ways and at different depths of the mind. My friend in Oxford and I both have access to very large vocabularies and both of us read and speak several languages, blessed with impeccable grammar from an early age - we can both fake it in public, always find a synonym and get by.

Yet dementia bedevils our every waking moment. A wordsmith and language teacher all my life, I have been blessed with impeccable spelling. No more, I use a dictionary constantly and write by hand every blog, every tweet and every SMS. Even then I make many a slip between hand and eye and have problems seeing and copying tinyurls!

I have huge difficulties in concentration - which is why twitter is a god send - I think in bursts of 140 characters. This text is a huge effort and what once I could have written in a single draft in half an hour, now takes several re-writes and several hours.

I have difficulty in groups of 3 or more people, especially if two talk at the same time. I can no longer watch a 90 minute movie, my mind wanders and I literally 'lose the plot'. An hour ago, earlier today, short term memory is shot.

Turning sixty

2010-01-03T19:44:00.001-08:00

Okay, so my 60th birthday is next year, but as my pedantic oldest son, Ben, pointed out. This is my sixtieth year. Tant pis!

Actually, I missed being fifty. I was 51 for two years. Don't ask. I just kept telling people I was 51 - perhaps being born in '51 caused a year long lapsus - was pleased as punch to realise I wasn't 52 and enjoyed being 51 second time round.

Of course, like most of us I guess, chronological age is seperate from how old we feel or sense ourselves to be. In dreams and day to day living, I feel and think of myself as younger - late 40s say - even though my body tells me otherwise. Our internal perception of age is at variance with chronological time.

The Daily Galaxy recently intoned that the first person who will live a thousand years is already born.

In a very real sense, my generation is one of the last generations of homo sapiens. By 2200, if not before, homo sapiens plus will be replacing the older species. Sometimes I get the impression this shift is already taking place.

I'll be happy to make three score years and ten. It has served our species well enough for some ten millenia. I do wonder how our fractured societies will manage the transition to living 100, 150 and 200 years.

My wife Cathy comes from a long lived family, many living into their nineties. I am already the oldest male of my paternal line in four generations.

This reflection will be continued. Here's to two years of being sixty.

Garrison Keiler tale from Lake Woebegone

2010-01-02T10:13:00.001-08:00

Two state workers cutting tops of trees at risk. Late afternoon sets in a snow blizzard, decide to go home. Cherry Picker truck develops problems, drive 20 miles in first gear as snow gets thicker. Stop to check engine. A tarpaulin flap had come loose, flipped lever and platform fully raised. Twenty miles of copper telephone wire dragged behind them. Cut wires, one says 'better call emergency' other replies 'lines are down!' Drive home, decide to keep schtum, jobs and all.

To this day folk in West Minnesota still remember snow blizzard when primeaval creature stalked the county fur, large footprints, chewed cable found. Used to warn children about snow blizzards.

Hung Parliament and a second election in 2010

2010-01-01T08:39:00.001-08:00

If the polls continue their current trends, a hung parliament and a second election in the autumn becomes very likely.

This could be the year of the duelling budgets.

Cameron is commited to a budget in 50 days, late June, and a summer parliament to pass the budget.

Should the Tories manage a minority government, the Tory budget risks defeat followed by an October election.

A close result would encourage Labour to stick with Brown to fight an autumn poll.

Both Labour and Tories should study the short lived Joe Clark Canadian government of 1979-80. Clarke lost his budget vote and lost the subsequent election. Despite 13 years in power the Liberals, under Trudeau, stormed back to power with a small majority.

Brown and Labour could do the same. Like Cameron, Joe Clarke failed "to seal the deal". People preferred a Trudeau budget over Clarke's.

Georgie 'boy' Osborne's GCSE June budget could well be a vote loser.

Personally, I expect a Labour government either with a small majority or a Labour minority.

Osborne's GCSE economics is Cameron's Achilles heel. A Tory summer budget would be an autumn vote loser. People in the media forget what a formidable opposition performer Gordon Brown is and would be.

There will be no summer hols for MPs this year, unless Brown wins.

Why I will vote Labour in 2010

2009-12-31T22:13:00.001-08:00

In November 2008, I met an old school friend, David Cheetham, that I have known for more than 40 years.

I told him unequivocally I would vote Cameron. I was totally opposed to ID cards and Cameron promised to scrap them.

Then I began to follow Cameron and Osborne's insane response to the global banking crisis.

I watched as Brown and Darling galvanised the global political and financial community during the haitus of the US presidential transition. By the time of Obama's inauguration, I had swung behind Brown and Darling. The Tories economic policy made no sense - it still doesn't. Then Cameron sided with east european homophobes, neo-fascists and anti-semites.

I swallowed my distaste of ID cards, which I still abhor, and supported Labour.

Brown impressed me over the G20 negotiations while Cameron and Osborne flailed in economic irrelevence.

More and more Cameron reminded me of the vacuous Blair.

As Brown and Ed Miliband - a far more astute politician than his dork of a brother David - began to address COP15 and climate crisis my mind was made up. The Tories made no sense on climate issues.

The two most pressing issues of 2009-10, climate crisis and banking crisis, Cameron and Osborne had little to say. What they did say was absurd.

A year later, I have yet to hear the Conservatives make sense on any issue. I shall listen carefully to Cameron these next few weeks.

I won't hold my breath.

On Gordon Brown

2009-12-31T13:22:00.000-08:00

Some weeks back, John Rentoul wrote an article mildly praising Gordon Brown. I wrote the following in response. It was on the Independent site for several hours and then removed. A comment by Ron Broxted was also lost. I don't know why Dr Rentoul removed it. It was not offensive, judge for yourself. Fortunately, my wife copied it to her site and it follows below.

"Chapeau John Rentoul"

While I might disagree with you about Blair, Anthony Seldon's baleful and forlorn wail for humility from Blair was majesterially trumped by John Arlidge in other parishes today.

This is a generous and acute assessment of Brown.

Both at G20 over the global banking crisis and this past week at COP15, Brown has shown a rare talent for international leadership and consensus building. He and the EU may have come away from Copenhagen empty handed but Brown won the moral argument on climate crisis.

Gordon Brown's principled stand beside Africa and the world's poorest countries, his insistence on firm figures for carbon reduction and defence of the need for transparency was statesmanship of a very high order.

The global stage will be diminished by his absence - whether on climate change or the global economy.

Extraordinarily and uniquely, he understands both issues in depth. He is also aware of the intimate link between the two. We have every right to be proud that he represents the UK and EU in such fora.

Many Tory and Blairite trolls may mock but their venom is no more than bile or self-loathing.

Brown has helped set high standards and high expectations - supported by Africa, the EU + others, not least NGOs, thanks to Brown and Ed Miliband the bar of climate change success has been set very high.

On climate and economic crisis: "We must all hang together or we will all hang seperately"

Mercia

2009-12-28T19:55:00.000-08:00

It is a pity that the English failed to seize the initiative and establish regional government during New Labour's dalliance with constitutional reform.

It is rumoured that Jack Straw was opposed and sabotaged any glimmer of interest. Be that as it may, the English lost the initiative and now may be condemned to administrative localism and centralised governance.

Mercia would have made an excellent regional structure - province - of some 8 million people. The First Minister of Mercia would have been one of the leading political figures in a revitalised UK.

A Mercian Parliament could have sought legislative powers over banking, health, education, industry, welfare and a measure of taxation. It could have built on the region's engineering and manufacturing tradition and prepared better its youth for 21st century employment.

Lord Toby Harris has given much thought to issues of governance. I hope he can convince the next government to revisit constitutional renewal.

Think! What thinking?

2009-12-28T18:21:00.001-08:00

I have moved from Independent Minds to blogspot. I shall retain the Livejournal site for comments on the Independent and a meditation on Time. It can be found on the right under T'ai.

Redemption

2009-03-12T17:03:00.000-07:00

"To turn every so did I wish it into a so it was, to me redemption would mean no less."

Nietzsche