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Although it started with a piece by by John Rentoul in the Independent on Sunday and him contemplating the shortly to open film on Margaret Thatcher starring Meryl Streep, it did set me to thinking about the whole concept of “Leadership” in a modern democratic society. http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/john-rentoul/john-rentoul-a-missed-chance-to-tell-the-truth-about-mrs-t-6283694.html

It was a good article but if anything and looking at some of the comments posted to it which seemed to be rooted in past battles long since lost by the Left, my feeling is that it is far too soon to even make a half decent attempt to judge the significance of Margaret Thatcher or indeed any other recent politician. The reality is that if you try to do so, you are not debating “facts”, just unproven myths…

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For me, 2011 has been an interesting year with most of the excitement crammed into June when as I was about to depart for a month long trip to the USA, my grandson Mika was born up in Scotland, the day before I left. So June 2011 was to be a very intense month indeed !

Inevitably when I sit and write anything on December 31^st, I think immediately of my Father who died in 2007, if he were still alive, he would have been 91 today, his birthday. But I will think no sad thoughts, nor sing sad songs for we all have our time on this Earth and all eventually will leave it, the measurement being what we did with our time here, not the length of our stay.

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At the ‘turning of yet another Year’ there was a really interesting article in The Economist recently about the continuing phenomena of yet further increases in US productivity, it is well worth a read even if it raises more questions than answers : http://www.economist.com/node/21542211

Of course it led me to consider a personal “theme” I have been developing and that I feel will become ever more important from 2012 onwards, right across the “Old” Western industrialised economies and the World at large, “Productivity” in the old sense, is no longer any kind of solution, new thinking is needed.

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The “in between Christmas and the New Year” does produce some interesting if rather odd articles in the “Media” that are not current news and have been sitting on some Editor’s shelf, waiting to be trotted out for times such as this “holidays and no actual staff currently working…” The following article about building a Heathrow replacement in the Thames Estuary being a prime example: http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/nicholas-faith-boris-island-must-never-be-able-to-get-off-the-ground-6281804.html

But all that said, it did provoke a mild stirring in the grey cells and some following thoughts…

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I was slightly amused by Chris Huhne giving an opinion on the motives of the “Tory Right Wing” with regard to the EU the other day but more than that, I also read a number of articles on Der Spiegel http://www.spiegel.de/international/ with regard to the current Euro Crisis which gives an interesting insight to some German thinking on the whole thing.

What struck me about these articles and however ‘reasonable in tone’ they are, the authors completely miss any basic understanding of a “British Perspective” which has been shaped over a long period of time and is largely influenced by us being “island races”. By the same token, I don’t suspect that we can easily understand Continental Europe with its contiguous land borders either that have shaped their present day views in both peace and war.

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At this time of year, the weekend before Christmas and the New Year, the ‘Media’ is full of “End of Year Perspectives” of one sort or another which generally manage to be totally appalling as the Editorial Staff “Make for the XMAS Hills”. This will be followed by two weekend’s worth of “Sunday Papers” that contain no news and were largely constructed, weeks ago to cover the total absence of any staff on the news desks…all being off on holiday ‘jollies’ whilst the proprietors of the “Titles” still want an income – total bullshit !

To add to that we have the death of a “noted journalist who was an atheist” called Christopher Hitchens and is ‘intimately missed’ by all the other media luvvies, a guaranteed recipe for maudlin sentimentality over a largely mediocre talent if past experience is to go by. Where shall I start ? With the dead atheist of course…

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There is a proposal by a UKIP Peer Lord Pearson of Rannoch to set up a House of Lords Committee to examine the value of the UK belonging to the European Union. It is envisaged that the membership of this committee would be made up of seven people, two “For”, two “Against”, two of no strong view on the matter and, an independent chairman.

The idea would be by diligent examination of the issues, it must be possible to arrive at a firm view, backed with facts that says that it is either “In” or “Against” the UK’s interests to be a member of the European Union. This is a fine ambition I might suggest but there are quite a number of obvious problems with the whole idea…

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For all the fuss over the EU, we really must concentrate on more important things like Christmas because the farce over last Friday, is emerging into a Pantomime in it’s own right. There was a LibDem MEP called Sharon Bowles who is chair of the European Parliament’s Committee on Economic and Monetary Affairs, declaring that she wished she could change her nationality to Irish to show support for the Euro – daft cow !

What made it all the funnier was she both looked and sounded like Julie Walters playing her role as “Mrs Overall” in the mock soap “Acorn Antiques”, I almost wet my pants watching the woman being interviewed, it was hilarious…if also slightly sad too.

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I really do find John Rentoul who writes for The Independent, a great read even when I disagree with him and today, fell about laughing with the opening paragraph of his article:

“If we are isolated and we are in the right, then that’s the correct position.” The Prime Minister was emphatic. Just because he had used Britain’s veto, he said, did not mean that he, or the British, were anti-European.” It was apparently what Tony Blair said after using a British Veto in Helsinki back in December 1999.

http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/john-rentoul/john-rentoul-any-pm-would-have-done-as-cameron-did-6275402.html#disqus_thread

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Whatever else may be said or written, as an Englishman, I am just so ‘stoked’ that for once, a British Prime Minister has returned from an EU Meeeting having made a positive decision and without excuses about why they were mugged by the ‘other big boys’, that is something even the ‘sainted Maggie’ never did. Well done David Cameron, I say.

Well we have the overnight fallout from the EU Conference on Treaty Changes to accommodate the Euro Crisis although these “changes” obviously don’t require a Treaty Change, they are just a further strengthening of the so called stability pact rules that everyone has already disregarded, led by Germany and France in the first place. What a load of bullshit this all was !

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