The Conservative Party (or as Monty Python would put it, the Silly Party) has a cunning plan to cut bureaucracy. Appoint bureaucrats to decide how much bureaucracy is really necessary!
Now why didn’t I think of that? 
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January 8th, 2004 | 9 comments - (Comments are closed)
 Back from Hastings with a satisfactory joint 3rd spot in my section of the weekend chess congress, I worry about what news I’ve missed since Friday. I shall report on this later in the week. Today I discover from the French Socialist Party’s website that they have a new, improved, cunning five-point plan to tackle unemployment:
I would go so far as to admit that for government job centres to call in their long-term unemployed, find out what they are doing to find work and even suggest re-training can produce results. But proposals 1 and 2… which incidentally contradict each other… I seem to recall that Jacques ‘Superliar’ Chirac proposed something like this in the 1990s when he stood for the presidency, but I and all the people I know that voted for him at the time were sure that he was lying.  January 6th, 2004 | 6 comments - (Comments are closed)
French reaction to Saddam’s capture is varied. The media call it a great victory for the US, the politicians are finding it harder to make up their minds what to say and public comment ranges from when will the US come and take Chirac? to No, they can’t have captured him, it’s impossible!. Coming after the setback over the EU constitution – it will be harder to push through when the other countries join – this is a rotten weekend for Saddam’s pen-pal Jacques Chirac. If the Iraqis stick him on trial, will we hear all about the attempt to sell nuclear technology in the 1970s by a former French prime minister? Now what was his name? December 14th, 2003 | 2 comments - (Comments are closed)
I’m hoping to enter the Hastings Weekend Chess Congress at the first weekend after the New Year. I have never previously been to the entry point to the UK of Perry de Havilland’s marauding ancestors. They were among the (so far) most successful gang of 11th century “asylum seekers”. In order of Anglosphere fame I suppose Hastings ranks as:
After that it will be time to prepare some tactical plays for the tournament itself: and exhausting schedule of one match ending on Friday night at 11pm, then three matches on Saturday running from 9.30am to 11pm pm, and another two matches on Sunday that I haven’t even begun to worry about. No kidding: I shall be doing some weight training over the next few weeks just to help with my stamina. (I can hear Adriana sniggering already) I shall also be re-freshing my familiarity with a few opening sequences. My nightmare would be a repeat of a 1995 match in Mill Hill against the then London under 8 year old champion, a certain David Ho. My favourite win posted online to date is this one, a tough positional game against a Minnesota amateur. December 9th, 2003 | 12 comments - (Comments are closed)
December 7th, 2003 | 6 comments - (Comments are closed)
Back to Brussels for the first time since 1990 (and the first time since 1988 for more than 24 hours). The racism is worse than I expected, especially on the part of Flemish speakers against French speakers (not just Walloons). The little things like shop opening hours, the lack of intelligence of policemen, the incompetence or unhelpfulness of bus drivers, trigger my French prejudices about Belgium being a sort of Franco-Dutch nation of retards. Partly it’s the accent and the slow-paced speech. A Belgian professor of mathematics with an IQ of 180 describing integrated calculus would sound like a dimwit to a French person. It is all the more strange for the attractiveness of the central districts of the town. Belgium is an ancient centre of capitalism: at one time Antwerp was the world’s largest trading centre and either Ghent or Brussels (I forget which) is supposed to have the oldest stock exchange in the world. There is architectural evidence of this: the older houses of Brussels are very individually designed, there was clearly a lot of wealth around in the 17th century, and there are more statues per square mile than any other city I can think of (and most of them look pretty good). White beggars in Belgium speak at least three languages: French, Flemish and English, they often also speak at least a smattering of a couple of either Dutch, German, Turkish or Arabic. The non-white beggars didn’t speak to me (is this an indication that whites don’t give them money willingly?). As usual in Europe, the East Europeans doing the low-status jobs are ridiculously overqualified: engineering school graduates working as garbage collectors or cleaners, bar staff with medical qualifications. In one respect Brussels is far superior to Paris: there are street kiosks in the town centre where one can buy snails, as well as the gauffre (waffle) and crèpe sellers that have been exported to other cities. One nastier thing is that in France I can go to a hotel, pay cash, give a false name and show no ID, whereas Belgium seems to have the old surveillance society trick of requiring all visitors to register their ID (this used to include staying at private addresses, but I don’t know if that still formally applies). Another bad thing is the police sirens are the same as in London: the stupid loud whooping noises designed for a grid road city that are confusing in cramped city streets. Parisian sirens are less noisy, don’t pump the adrenalin of police drivers as much (I would love to know if there are fewer fatal road accidents caused by Paris police responding to emergency calls than London), and you can tell where they’re coming from. I made a walk-in visit to an Emergency Room to arrange for a prescription and found a compromise between the British National Health Service (queue, grubby surroundings) and France (helpful, competent and much, much, much faster, but one pays). The price of the medication was cheaper than in the UK. I shall make enquiries about gun laws and taxes. The disturbing evidence so far is the number of notices about taxes. It is easier to find information about registering for taxes than finding a decent street map of Brussels. November 19th, 2003 | 4 comments - (Comments are closed)
I shall miss the fuss in London on Thursday because of a prior engagement in Brussels, but I will spare a thought for the demonstration of collectivists versus the protectionist. Mr Bush is in the unlikely position of being a villain during this visit to London because he is defending tariffs on steel imports, and I can hardly praise a man for making the European Commission appear like the good guys! Some of his opponents will actually be protesting against protectionism on the grounds that opening trade is the best hope for greater prosperity worldwide, with the handy by-product of reducing the number of layabout juveniles dreaming of doing something spectacular and violent: they are too busy doing MBAs or training to become plastic surgeons. I could even support the demonstration if there were a chance that the message would be received in Washington DC that protectionism is an abomination and a great source of warfare (I believe it even triggered the US Civil War, and in that respect the wrong side won). As for the occupation of Iraq: I continue to despair at the difficulty that anglosphere writers have in comprehending the humiliation of occupation. Admittedly this is for the best of reasons: Washington DC was last under foreign armed occupation in 1812, London in 1066. The dislike of foreign occupation is neither entirely rational nor without ambivalence. Of course the occupying troops in Iraq overthrew a dictator who committed atrocities against his neigbouring countries, his own people, even his own family. British soldiers may know that when their predecessors first patrolled the streets of Belfast in 1969 (I don’t remember the precise date, I was about 4 years old at the time), the Catholic inhabitants cheered them, offered them cups of tea, etc. The welcome did not last. If the purpose of allied occupation of Afghanistan and Iraq is as cynical as attracting potential Islamic fundamentalist terrorists to those countries and fight them (and kill many of them) away from Western cities, it could be a good plan. There is a certain logic to persuading the extremists to make their way to Jalalabad and Tikrit and face professional troops instead of Manhattan or the City of London and kill civilians. If I thought the ‘War on Terrorism’ were being fought so capably I would be far more confident. But I do not, and I am not. So let ‘the indefensible pursue the inedible’: I went on the Countryside marches in support of the right of hunters to chase foxes. I shall be in the Grande Place enjoying my Trappist beer with mussels and frites whilst following the sport on the streets of London. Tally Ho! November 17th, 2003 | 33 comments - (Comments are closed)
The ‘fraudster’ meaning, of course, Jacques Chirac. The new president of the European Central Bank is M. Jean-Claude Trichet and buried away at the foot of an old news report is this gem:
That is more than £21,000,000,000! For one bank. Nine people. I can just hear them: “Bah! Nick Leeson! “Betsygate” indeed! You English drive your minis with your Benny Hill and your Michael Caine, stealing a few gold bars in Milan and think you’re so marvellous! Hah!” The Crédit Lyonnais bank ‘affair’ included a massive fraud including loans being made to friends of the late president François Mitterand. At least one of them got a few months in jail to my knowledge. A concerted effort was made to delay the appointment of a new ECB president until M. Trichet’s problems could be dealt with. Ironically, the French verb for to cheat is tricher which is pronounced exactly the same as our new Euro bank president’s name. A very suitable friend for M. Jacques Chirac. The president whose unofficial re-election campaign slogan was Vote for the fraudster, not the fascist! but who has avoided judicial processes by virtue of presidential immunity from prosecution. So much in common for them to talk about. Now let us assume that M. Trichet were the innocent victim of devious bank subordinates who stole £21,000 million. Personally, I find such a degree of stupidity fantastic: the guy could scarcely have enough brain cells to know how to breathe. Is this really the calibre of executive to put in charge of an EU institution? A couple of other things worry me. What did the other European leaders think they were doing when none of then vetoed the appointment of Trichet? Perhaps Mr Blair really is a closet hater of the euro – I hope so. And if the currency markets are not dumping euros for US dollars before M. Chirac’s friends get their pillaging underway… what do they know about what the Federal Reserve guys are up to? November 7th, 2003 | 35 comments - (Comments are closed)
Mr Duncan Smith has become famous at last. He has also managed to get 45 per cent in a confidence vote. To British readers, used to three way elections where such a score would guarantee a big majority in the House of Commons, IDS seems to have done well. But in a two way contest, especially as the incumbent, it’s not so good. I recall that François Mitterand had the nickname "Monsieur 45 pour cent" because he could never break that barrier in French presidential election contests from the 1960s until 1981. For my part, I really thought that Mr Duncan Smith would be a lot more capable than he in fact turned out to be. Lucky Tony Blair. Unlucky Gordon Brown. October 29th, 2003 | Comments are closed
Two problems in subdeveloped countries: dumping of subsidised argicultural produce in local markets which destroys local agriculture, and in Iraq, I am told the big bottleneck in getting electric power services restored is the looting of power cables. I wonder how expensive this problem is in financial terms, we certainly know that power outages are a powerful symbol of the failings of the coalition forces. I wonder if we could employ one of the EU’s most wicked weapons for a good cause? I propose the dumping of a massive copper wire mountain in Iraq and neighbouring countires. Basically troops should hand out 500 yards of copper wire to every Iraqi who asks for it, in exchange for the price of a cup of coffee. For reasons which would be obvious to any British healthcare user, there had better be a price, or demand will be unlimited. The result of such a Cable Dumping Plan would be the destruction of the black market in wire theft from power lines as there would be no effective market to sell the looted product: the looters would find undercutting the subsidized rates very hard. Even if all the looters start saving their coffee money to buy miles of cable, they are not disconnecting the power supply. We are left with the problem of deliberate sabotage, but this can be solved by normal occupying power policing techniques. The equation is: political cost of failing to get the power working versus the economic cost of a cable dumping policy. September 18th, 2003 | 5 comments - (Comments are closed)
I feel a bit like the photographer sent to take snaps of village wedding for the local newspaper and who came back saying that there wasn’t story, because the bride didn’t show up. I decided to check out the other BBC website (the tax-funded one) to see what convulsions the anti-euro vote from Sweden had caused. The result was this rather unbalanced series of postings, supporting the Swedish NO result. September 15th, 2003 | 9 comments - (Comments are closed)
For those of you who’ve been shipwrecked in the South Seas, or sitting in a hospital queue in London, or are just coming round from a spectacular drunk, there’s a bizarre election going on in California. The two issues are: should Governor Gray Davis be forced to resign because enough voters managed to put a petition together, and if so, who should replace him. The front runner is exciting not least for fans of the scene in ‘Demolition Man’ where Lenina Huxley (Sandra Bullock) says to a de-frosted John Champion (Sylvester Stallone) that they should research in the Schwarzenegger Presidential Library. His response: “NO WAY!” Well Arnold Schwarzenegger, who once polled one vote in a (British) Conservative Students’ poll “Who should be the next Prime Minister” (after Margaret Thatcher), is the favourite in terms of money, polls and name recognition to become Governor of California. Should he win, a mere amendment to the US Constitution (or an outrageous ‘re-interpretation’ by Supreme Court judges having a giggle) seperates the Terminator from the nuclear button. (Is this the plot for T4? The Machine runs for President!) The election itself is fairly extraordinary. 135 candidates (3 of them libertarians). A straight first past the post which means that a candidate could win – in theory at least – with less than 0.75 per cent of any turnout. That is to say 3 actual votes out of every 400 votes cast. And we know that turnouts can be low. I must confess that the Libertarian candidate who strikes me as worthy of support is Ned Fenton Roscoe, of Napa County, occupation “Cigarette retailer” and whose website is www.smokersparty.com. I almost suspect the hand of Paul Staines… The other two libertarians are described as a “Healthcare District Director” and a “State tax officer” from Sacramento. See here for a full list of candidates. N.B. Non-US citizens are not allowed to give money to any candidate. August 19th, 2003 | 3 comments - (Comments are closed)
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