A wider regional middle east war could be very close

Things are getting very very dangerous. As the BBC cheers on the protesters there will be those in Israel doing the maths on what a government containing a significant Muslim Brotherhood element will mean for Israel.

Unless they are terminally naive, and I think we can assume they aren't, they must look on this as potentially being required to fight on 4-5 fronts (vs Hamas, Hezbollah/Lebanon, Syria, Iran & Egypt) in a war for survival at a time of their enemies choosing. With the thousan

ds of terror missiles the world has allowed Hezbollah to install and who knows what's been smuggled into Gaza Israel could be under bombardment across its entire territory at the same time as it needs maximum logistically flexibility.

In short this is a condition any military advisor may reach the conclusion that the situation is untenable, leaving pre-emption as the only option. ( A logic easily followed by the military establishments of the established states who would be on a hair trigger to respond or even get their retaliation in first ).

This is horribly horribly unstable.

Not you don't need an opinion on the Palestinian / Israeli dispute to reach these conclusions.

So as everyone cheers on regime change in Egypt remember the year may end in at best a very nervous nuclear armed Mexican hair triggered stand off.

I imagine the CIA is busy trying to prevent this by controlling the succession or preventing a revolution .. unless Obama has stopped them.

See also: From Wikipedia a map of who's been at war with Israel in the past 70 years ( dark green means has been at war - the other light green countries are predominately Arab countries . )

For an Israeli view of the potential in events see here ...

Labour Live - BBC inbuilt bias continues

The above is from the BBC news web site front page Sunday 30th Jan. Each headline gives the left wing message which is old and unbalanced, but oh so typical for the bigots at the BBC.

So here we go again - 3 and a half days since PMQs - and the BBC still leads with it anti-Cameron headlines given it by Labour. A suitable picture to reinforce the left wing message is chosen.

The BBC are a direct threat to our democracy. Their inbuilt left wing bigotry a knife pressed at the heart of the country.

Its all cuts, cuts cuts and what will cuts be like in your area.

Has anyone seen the drama showing what life would be like for our children under the debt burden the left are planning ? A drama where life saving drugs can't be afforded because a selfish generation, cheered on by the BBC, spend all the money then and in the future. Don't hold your breath.

Revolutions are often blood thirsty and one oppressor is soon replaced by another

Listening and reading those egging on the uprising in Egypt, like the BBC. I can't help thinking that something far worse may be round the corner.

Often, though not always, one oppressor is replaced by one far worse.

An Egypt that wasn't at least neutral to Israel almost guarantees a full blown regional and maybe world war.

Certain religious groups will guarantee oppression on an Iranian scale.

But still the cheers from the west are for the rioters and those who want to spin the barrel of the pistol and pull the trigger one more time.

Update: This analysis from the Quilliam foundation is perhaps more optimistic. But you have to ask who pulls their strings ?

Why complain about the scrapping of Nimrod now ?

There's a lot more to the letter to the Telegraph today from ex-Service chiefs talking about he damage of scrapping the Nimrod MK4s.

Its all about timing and the dog that didn't bark.

Why complain when its too late. At least one airframe is wrecked - the others will be by the end of the week. In short its too late. When you complain about a course of action when its effectively too late to stop it your motives must be questioned.

And why did no one complain in these terms at the time of the announcement ?

I've already blogged about the mystery of the governments attitude to Nimrod, given our maritime nations obvious defence needs. But there's also the mystery of its critics.

Nothing makes sense - except ( and I hate to say this as I'm falling into the blogger typecasting trap ) a conspiracy.

The only people to be deceived, again, are the public. A game of politics is being played out with the security of the country and its very worrying.

Further: Thomas Harding reports service staff already starting to look around for a replacement for Nimrod ! Clearly something is very wrong.

To see the maritime aircraft your Govt. will be making you pay for in a few years (again) look here.

Also see this summary on spyflight.co.uk of the Nimrod MK4A project which perhaps gives clues as to why Govt. is so keen to hush everything up. ( This suggests is a Govt vs the people thing, not a party political issue - which in many ways is even more worrying. )

See also Dr Liam Fox answer's the critics here.

My view is that Nimrod was clearly a disastrous project - but it has been neither in the contractor's, MOD's, RAF's, nor politician's (of both parties) interests to admit as much.

Of course the need for a system such as Nimrod MKA4 is obvious ( hence all the press now ), but the lesson to be learnt is being seeped under the carpet.

The movement for change

When I first heard that title I assumed it had to be a joke. It was lame and vague - but in a sinister sort of way.

Well apparently they're serious and infiltrating the Labour party encourage by David Miliband.

Its about a weird as the Simpson's equivalent below:



Now I wonder if they're linked to Common Purpose ?

I shouldn't laugh as they seem to support the Big Society and get a mention in Conservative literature also apparently.

Don't forget Obama used to be a "community organiser".

All I can say is they make the hairs on the back of my neck stand up - there's something desperately wrong here...

Retail waste land

I'm Getting the car fixed in Aldershot today and thought rather than waste my time going home I'd look around.

What I've found is a retail wasteland. One end of the indoor shopping centre is a graveyard of closed shops.

I'm slightly puzzled as to why given its a large military town and the cuts haven't started yet.

Anyone any ideas as why thongs things would be so bad in Aldershot ?

(I'd take a picture to show you, only my experience of doing this in the past is that it brings security down on you. )

Published with Blogger-droid v1.6.5

Update. I think some of the units have moved to the other end of the centre. But the question is perhaps still was this amount of shops ever viable, and if so why are things so dramatic here ?

The new fascists

Can be seen attacking Melanie Phillips today...

This is no longer a free country.

The BBC's leftwing mindset explained by Peter Sissons

Many of us go on and on about the political bias inherent in the BBC's output. ( And not just the news - everything from EastEnders to the Archers get the Guardian reader seal of approval. )

Well Peter Sissons is telling like it is over in the Daily Mail.

Its time someone woke up in the Coalition and started treating the BBC like the threat to democracy it really is.

Questions about the sad events that have engulfed Alan Johnson

Beyond the double trajedy of the manner of the end of Alan Johnson's front bench political career and his personal pain there are some apolitical questions that the revelations in the press so far imply but aren't being asked.

1. Did this affair between his police protection officer and Alan Johnson's wife start whilst he was still home secretary in the last government ?
2. If so - was MI5 aware ? Clearly one of the most important men in the country was compromised and potentially black-mailable.
3. How could this ever come about ? What sort of people are the Met putting on personal protection duty. Clearly they are not vetted correctly. When the Home Secretary is compromised so is the entire country. ( I assume the Home Secretary as well as his domestic security responsibilities is also high up in the chain of command for things like the release of nuclear weapons. )
   

It seems odd that more isn't yet made of these points.

The Nimrod mystery deepens

The govt is about to cut up the new Nimrods. You have to wonder why ?

Surely the logical thing would have been storage ?

Earlier Post: The Nimrod Mystery

The bigger they are the harder you need to sink your teeth into them !

In Russia even the Hamster's are crazy !

Climate Heresy: Has it all been a waste of time and effort ?

Climate Heresy: Has it all been a waste of time and effort ?

Remember the govt and all the main political parties are betting our future on this ....

Time for a real political debate I think ...

High inflation is govt policy - just not official policy

One of the key lessons of the Wiki leaks episode is there are open secrets that everyone except the voters knows.

Here's an obvious one - higher inflation is a deliberate policy to reduce UK wage costs and inflate away debt. Reducing the wage costs will bring the recovery closer as we have to work harder for our iPhone and flat screen 3-D TVs and actually sell the rest of the world something in return.

Inflation is also they way governments default on some of our societies debts.

But it all requires the pretence that it isn't happening.

That's now stretching credulity to breaking point..

Personally I'm against this policy as the greatest mistake I see the Conservative part of the current government making is not levelling with the general population about our true condition. We have instead gone for triangulation and slight of hand - and when the time comes to say "trust us there is no alternative" the credibility will be missing and we may fail as Ted Heath did.

The government needs to make an honest case, not carry out a policy in the hope no one will notice.

See also Mark Field MP "Have the authorities decided that tackling inflation will be too painful?"
James Kirkup "Inflation, the BoE and the Coalition: something's got to give"
Fraser Nelson "The inflation crisis deepens"
Allister Heath "You can’t fool everyone all the time"

( All MSM - anyone have any not MSM blog posts on this ? )

The Nimrod mystery

One of the less commented on aspects of the defence review was the cancellation of Nimrod Mk4, even though its apparently almost finished. ( Compare this to the mass howling and gnashing of teeth over the Harriers being scrapped. )

It quite clear since the 1940's that the UK needs a maritime patrol aircraft. New Zealand has given up on most of its airforce, but kept the Orion patrol aircraft.

So why cancel something the UK so obviously needs just when its apparently ready to be rolled out ?

It doesn't add up ... unless there's more to the story than is be admitted to.

I think its a safe bet that within 10 years the RAF will be flying Orions also. But there something gone on here. Maybe its not the Nimrod AEW fiasco, but it seems to be in everyone's interests not to rock the boat on this one.

Oldham East and Saddleworth was worse for the Lib Dems than the headline numbers suggest

Firstly congratulations to Debbie Abrahams, (any relation to the Abrahams Labour had so much trouble with on donations a while back ? ), though I think she spoke her first major fib as an elected representative when she said she would keep her promises. Since Labour have a blank bit of paper as their policies right now she can't possibly know that.

But back to the voting. It seems that the Lib Dems haemorrhaged votes to Labour, but that impact was hidden in the headline vote tallies by tactical voting by Conservative supporters whom voted Coalition rather than party.

The evidence for this ? Well at counts the parties get a lot more information that is widely known by the public. Each ward is counted separately, watched by representatives from each party. They know from canvassing returns what the support should be in each ward and can estimate and even count the votes as they come in. There were reports of large numbers of Conservatives votes going to the Lib Dems. Given the national political situation I can't believe that's because loads of traditional Tories have suddenly discovered they like Nick Clegg et al. This effect was reported by Laura Kuenssberg in her tweet last night and here.

What this means is that for the general public the Lib Dems will be able to keep up the front that all is fine, but their more savy activists will know the word on the street is that it ain't so. In a general election they could not rely on this sort of helping hand from the Tories - or perhaps they many conclude its their only chance ? Who knows ? What we do know is this result is far worse for the Lib Dems than the headlines suggest.

Looking at Tweetminster

I bumped into the two founders of Tweetminster last night, who rather socially got the first drink in. I hadn't paid to much attention to their stuff before, but it look interesting. In many ways tweets may become the new instant reaction MPs postbag that MPs claim to pay attention to the weight of, and if this happens then services like Tweetminster will have made it possible.

Waste a few more mins of work time and go and have a look....

Labour's new debt and history denial strategy

At last Red Ed has woken up the idea that Labour's selling our children and us into debt slavery has been a little unpopular.

So like Red Len on the radio earlier in the week he has a new re-write of history that will let Labour say it will do something, but their only mistake was to trust the evil capitalist banks who murder kittens round the clock in the docklands. ( Even though the banks in trouble where all Labour heartland banks with close political connections to Labour. )

So perhaps they didn't 'rebalance the economy' enough. Perhaps there wasn't enough blaming of the banks. But let nobody remember the structural deficit that Labour started as soon as Brown shock of the Tory spending plans two years in. Let no one remember the failure to reform or the deceit of rising educational standards when we now know that was a very cruel deceit at the expense of our youth.

Yes Labour can't bring themselves to admit what wen't wrong, but they are rather worried the general public are going to understand. So a new lie is required from Gordon Brown's closest of allies who has been imposed on the Labour party by the Trade Unions ( which means public sector trade unions - they who ensure our public services can't imp[rove and will drag us to the depths of economic destruction socialists dream about drowning us all in so much. )

Read the Guardian article on the new lies Ed Miliband has approved and weep....

The new Opium wars

Whilst some good things came of it, specifically the crown colony of Hong Kong - which has massively influence the welcome emergence of China, the Opium Wars were a moral low point for the British Empire. ( A much maligned Empire that we should in many ways be proud of - but its not an unblemished record ).

In short the Chinese were forced to take opium sold by British merchants. When they refused, due to the effects we are all to familiar with today of drugs on your society, we sent in the gun boats and changed their minds.

Well now something of a reverse of this is beginning to emerge. The West, and especially the left wing politicians of the West - though not exclusively, have become addicted to reward today and to hell with tomorrow. This is perhaps a result of the short term rewards our electoral system provides, combined with the mainlining of focus groups and market research - which lets the feckless demand the moon on a stick now. So the West has a debt habit.

Now the East has encouraged that habit, indeed it needs it for the current model of business it employs ( whilst quietly arranging for more and more raw resources to redirected to those businesses ). SO we have representatives of the Chinese govt promising Spain and encouraging Portugal with promises of support for their debt. Alls fine as long as you stay as a customer ....

This continued habit is undermining the long term future of our societies in the west. Like an opium addict we just lack the will power to refuse our next fix, and it looks like the supplies of new credit won't dry up from the East - so no chance of cold turkey sobering us up.

Of course the Chinese run a single party state, with central planning and mostly ex-Engineers at the top. They take a long term view, and as the Chinese showed with Hong Kong they have the patience to allow their strategy to bare fruit. Given their history its hard to blame them.

We just have a habit, and a growing problem and no easy way top break the dependence even though it is going to lead to our ruin.

You could argue this is economic warfare on a par with that Regan and the West used to defeat the Soviet Union, only this time its the West that's heading for defeat and unfortunately with debt enslavement.

Its time the right of centre started to raise this problem more forcefully.

See also Analysis -
China's support for euro a necessity, not a virtue Reuters.
Europe fears motives of Chinese super-creditor Daily Telegraph.

A slightly different analysis reported by Dan Hannan
China's purchase of euro bonds might not be a sign of confidence in Europe, but a prelude to a sell-off

Lets get this straight the banks are the symptom not the cause

#RedEd's is straight back to Labour's shameless denial of history tactics as they try to brain wash their supporters that the structural deficit Labour ran to bulk up the unreformed public sector ( mostly to buy votes and pay for the ambition of one certain recently ex-prime minister ) didn't cause the ever increasing debt rates our country now has, which are causing us to sell our children's future so we can be selfish today !

This really does matter. ( I had a "I get it" about the debt - stop going on tweet from a reader yesterday - but this is so important that I will keep going on about it. ) The right needs to win this argument. It is not good enough just being correct - we need to ensure the electorate understands and accepts why that is the case. The left's aims are the opposite - to make the harm worse by denying the facts and spreading easy solutions based on ignorance and frankly evil deceit.

Gordon Brown allowed a debt bubble to grow in the UK. It was great for him, as he taxed the transactions that it created, and spent them bribing the general public with their own money to vote Labour. He didn't undertake the moral requirement of improving efficiency as he needed to buy of the public sector unions for his own ambition - and as in now being realised again its the public sector unions that ensure public services are inefficient and unaffordable.

Then Brown stepped in to save banks from Labour's heartlands ( not the city of London or the South East note ! ). The Chelsea Building society would have been allowed to go tot he wall, but not Northern Rock, RBS, HBOS. A perfectly good English bank was pressured into destroying its shareholder value to rescue a local bank of Brown and Darling.

But will Labour admit any of this and apologise ( and indeed manifesto writing and Brown supporting dead beats like Red Ed Miliband should resign ) ?

Not a chance. They will lie instead. Rather than put country first they will rail about cuts in the hope of getting their ministerial limos back.

The problem is that we aren't making nearly nearly enough noise about their guilt and despicable behaviour.

Further reading:

"Did high-spending before the boom turned to bust (which wasn’t supposed to happen, you’ll remember) have anything to do with the size of the current deficit?" - Iain Martin over at the WSJ on #RedEd's taking the Gordon Brown line.

"The crash from an Austrian perspective" - Fraser Nelson at the Coffee House

Required reading

I've been getting progressively disillusioned with The Economist, many of its articles seem to have crossed the rubicon into propagating a left of centre world view and evangelising it rather than the analysis and summary which was its key selling point.

But the article in this week edition on the public sector Unions is worth its weight in gold.

Everyone in the west who comes from the right of centre needs to read this article.

In short it explains the threat to the West that public sector Unions represent - and we need to do something about it.

Here are a few quotes - I highly recommend reading the whole thing !

"Unions have also made it almost impossible to sack incompetent workers."

"But public-sector unions are relentless in demanding more resources and more personnel, which conveniently translate into more members and more dues."

"Public-sector unions combine support for higher spending with vigorous opposition to more accountability. Almost everywhere they have demonised competition, transparency and flexible pay."

Given the severity of the debt crisis in the Wetsern world and the UK in partivcllar and the public sector fubnded camapigns about "cuts" - its important we see the bigger picture. We can afford the cancerous public sector failing to deliver and taking all the resources in our society. Its not the 'banks' that are the enemy its the public sector unions. Its our task to help the general public understand why this is true and why its vital that these unions are defeated and improvements in public services allowed to help reduce the debt burden we are selling our children's futures with.

Dead beat Ed tries to shift the blame by denial

#RedEd is repeating his theme (behind the Times paywall) that the massive national debt built up by Labour never happened. Yes despite the fact that we have reported examples of how Labour ran a structural deficit during the good times ( created by the good management of the previous Conservative govt I might add ) just for the tactical electoral advantage of being able to campaign on what the evil kitten murdering Tories would cut.

We would be in crisis without the bank problems - in fact in many ways the unsustainable debt bubble people like Brown used to fuel their own selfish personal ambition helped cause the banking crisis ( assisted by some of Bill Clinton's Democrats legacy in the US on mortgage lending policy ).

Labour is out to rewrite history and just straight lie to people faces - just as they did during the Brown and Blair years.

They, and in particular Red Ed, are debt deniers and liars.

For more details see here.

20% VAT ? That's just part of the price of 13yrs of Labour waste

Labour have to be shameless. The truth is so shocking that they daren't approach it with barge pole. Their best bet is that the BBC to play along and try to just report their spin and distortion ( now they have a new "Forces of Hell" team in place to try to make #RedEd look less of a total disaster).

20% VAT ? Despite Labour and their #Union masters distortions on the media today ( reported faithfully by the ever biased BBC - which did eventually acknowledge a report which shows how the rich will be paying more than the poor, but only after the smear was aired fully ) its necessary.

In fact given the small cuts that have been made ( ie virtually none yet ) its not as big a tax rise as may be needed ( remember Labour are arguing for larger tax rises - to avoid cutting their spending spurge they used to buy the last few elections ).

This is the price of a Labour government. Personally I would have wound up all Gordon Brown's stealth taxes and the debt tax they have created with the national debt and fired up income tax so the public could see how conned they've been by Ed Miliband and his sixth form socialism debating team chums.

It will be a serious mistake if the government and Conservative party don't start pinning the blame of the feckless Labour leader and his failed team.