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Archive for September, 2008

I have lived near Heathrow during two periods of my life, the last up until 4 and a bit years ago when I lived in a place called Bedfont which is adjacent to Terminal 4 on the south side of the Airport. I must confess to being a great fan of all things that fly be they machines or birds.

The maisonette I lived in was on the first and second floors of the block, north facing and parallel to the southern runway. Heathrow is an exciting place which does have its own buzz…

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Not setting the political agenda ? The answer must be no against the background of the Global Financial Crisis and Capitol Hill killing, if only for the moment, the American Rescue Bill last night – just a case when external events drive the agenda and its better to go with the flow !

However nothing serious is lost here and patience must be the order of the day. This Tory Conference was never going to be the same “pivotal moment” as last year’s was unless Labour had started the assassination of Gordon Brown at their Party Conference and they didn’t, all that was heard were the sounds of clucking chickens but there you go…

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With the launch of the Conservative Conference David Cameron with an eye to the current International and Domestic turmoil in the money markets and the state of the Public Finances, wants to set up new structures to monitor both.

One of the people who wrote in to the Telegraph correctly pointed out that there are standing Parliamentary Committees designed to do just this and it set me to thinking. The problem is that today in the world of the professional politician the “context” has changed and it no longer works as well as it did.

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My opposition to ID Cards is not based upon Civil Liberties or any such issues, it is based upon what is an obviously flawed technology and a poor design by people who do not understand the problem and therefore should not be proposing solutions until they do.

That software companies want to sell their wares to the British Government is fair enough except that politicians are just not qualified to make a decision on it. This came to mind again when I noted in PR Week another classic cock up about to be made by the Labour Party.

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John McCain’s running mate for VP Sarah Palin gave a quite disastrous TV interview in which she just did not appear to be either focused or even prepared, I am sure that she will be very angry with herself and not likely to ever repeat it in the future.

As a British Citizen with some personal connections to the States, I can understand the appeal of a candidate like Ms Palin to a large section of the American electorate and reject the disdain displayed by both the American and European “smart people” who would no doubt consider themselves cultured and urbane.

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When what you are doing works, keep doing it, if it doesn’t work then do something else which all sounds simple because it is unfortunately there is another factor as well. Sometimes, perhaps you have passed the tipping point, it doesn’t matter what you do, it all goes horribly wrong – always and I’m afraid that is where Labour is now at.

The total cock up of Ruth Kelly resigning to spend more time with her family is a case in point. Just how did that get leaked in the way that it did ? How can your news management be so bad if as the official story goes, this was agreed between her and Brown some months ago ?

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From out of nowhere, the Labour Party starts kite flying on the subject that “If they get a 4^th Term, they will repeal the Act of Settlement which is simple terms forbids the Monarch to be or marry a Catholic. Well actually, it is all a bit more involved than that and historically connected to various other historical matters but now is not the time or place to go into that.

For some strange reason known only to the dip sticks in the Labour Party, they seem to imagine that this is a burning issue with British Catholics and therefore a slam dunk vote winner – ???

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As I know people will be waiting with baited breath for my prognostications on the Labour Party Conference, I thought that I had better pen a quick summary starting with the main non events of these past few days.

The Rebels did not rebel, Cherie Blair was ‘nice’ – well as nice as she can be and John Prescott did turn up wearing a bad haircut or a syrup of figs and dressed as the Punch and Judy man, perhaps he thought they were marching on to Blackpool for a rally.

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I am a Boris fan and in today’s Daily Telegraph, Boris Johnson wrote an article that whilst acknowledging the greed and stupidity of some in the City, also defended it’s importance not just to London but also to the whole UK economy.

I suppose that I am old and experienced enough to have guessed before I even read them, the vehemence, bile and condemnation of all Bankers that was to follow in the comments section was no surprise. In some ways and although loony, it was amazing just how many unrelated topics came to the surface like: “Finance Industry is NOT an industry, it doesn’t make anything…”.

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Throughout the present turmoil which let’s face it, started for us in the UK with Northern Rock in the Summer of 2007 and dragged on until February 2008 when it was finally nationalised which has made it the UK’s Toxic Bank. Nobody in Government has stood up and apologised or accepted responsibility for any of it.

We have in the UK the most arrogant and ignorant politicians anywhere on the Planet and I would say that it is high time that we the electorate, taught them a sharp lesson and we have the means to hand to do so by voting on our Ballot Papers at the next election – NONE OF THE ABOVE. Now whilst in Australia I believe they actually have that on their ballot papers, we don’t but we can still achieve the same by deliberately ‘spoiling’ our ballot papers by putting a cross in every box.

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