Sinister ACPO to oppose Cameron's police plans

ACPO is a sinister and shadowy organisation beyond the reach of any public accountability, its members peer-selected in a corrupt freemasonry of cabalistic power. It feels powerful enough to advise Chief Constables to ignore the ECHR ruling on illegally held DNA, and now they have the statutory right to veto any Chief Constable appointment made by a democratically elected Police Authority. The first task of a Conservative government should be to outlaw the organisation and remove all its privileges.

No doubt that's why ACPO Capo di tutti capi Hugh Orde has come out so strongly against Cameron's proposed democratically elected Chief Constables or Watch Committees in today's Independent.

And just who elected you, Hugh? Or any of your chums in ACPO?

If the public wants someone to head their local police force who is neither a Freemason of the old order or of the new malefic Common Purpose, that's their choice - it's their police force - who the Hell do you think you are to interfere?

Don't write Brown off yet

Peter McKay in the Mail this morning, and Damian Thompson in the Telegraph, both reckon Brown won't make it past Christmas. In the next few weeks I expect we'll see a lot of this opinion, but my money's on Gordon bludgeoning his way through to next year and the election.

I think enough Labourites will reckon their best long-term tactic for saving the party is to let Gordon lead it to an ignominious defeat and blame him for everything afterwards; I can already hear the mendacious platitudes about "The post-Gordon Labour party is a very different party, oh yes" and "We lost our way when we gave in to Gordon's demands to be Leader; it's not a mistake the New New Labour Party will make again"

I'll bet Sarah's already chosen the piccy for the Downing Street Christmas Multiethnic Winterval Card, and MPs, who don't come back from their Summer holidays until 12th October and disappear again for the Christmas break on 18th December (or earlier if Harman wishes), will hardly have time to cook up any Parliamentary awkwardness for Gordon.

But I could, as they say, be wrong.

Parties on verge of falling below 1% threshold

A report in the Independent suggests the Conservatives have lost a further 40,000 members since Cameron became leader. They're not alone; both Labour's and the LibDem's members have continued to fall away. My best guess at current party memberships is that the Tories have 230,000, Labour 160,000 and the LibDems 60,000 - about 450,000 between them.

The UK electorate is currently a smidgeon over 45m. The combined memberships of the three big parties are therefore on the verge of falling below a 1% threshold - just one in a hundred electors being a member of any of the three.

As the old mass-membership parties have centralised both policymaking and power and have become consumer brands rather than associations over the last thirty years so millions of voters across the country have deserted them. The campaign language of the parties has become indistinguishable from that of brand marketeers; Mondeo Man and Worcester Woman. Using marketing tools such as ACORN, central parties can target campaigning down to street level.

Enter your postcode at Up My Street and you can get your own street profile; mine reads

Type 15 in the ACORN classification and 1.17% of the UK's population live in this type.

Neighbourhoods fitting this profile are found primarily in London (Wandsworth, Hammersmith and Fulham, Merton, Kensington and Chelsea, Richmond-upon-Thames and Ealing) as well as in Oxford, Cambridge and Edinburgh.

These people live in affluent urban areas, where large attractive houses have often been converted into flats. Whilst many do own their home, the proportion of rented accommodation is relatively high.

People in this type are very highly qualified; one in four have postgraduate and professional qualifications. They work in professional and senior managerial occupations, with many spending very long hours at work.

Most residents are either young singles or couples. There are very few children and those there are tend to be under five, which suggests that young families move on from these areas.

As one of the highest earning types, they have relatively high disposable incomes. They invest in a broad range of products including high interest accounts, ISAs, and stocks and shares. They are comfortable using the Internet to do their financial research.

In the winter, this type is the most likely to go skiing. They will then take at least one other holiday which is usually foreign and often far flung. When at home they take advantage of the range of theatre and arts available to them from living in the city. They also enjoy good food and wine, both at home and in restaurants.

They are interested in current affairs and are very likely to buy a daily paper, which they probably read as they commute to work. They usually choose from The Guardian, Independent, The Times and Financial Times. At the weekend they like The Sunday Times and Observer.

Astonishing, isn't it?

In the wake of the Obama campaign, many political advisors on this side of the ditch have been speculating that the internet, email campaigns and Web 2.0 together with sophisticated marketing tools such as this can win election campaigns. So who needs members? Why is the 1% threshold important?

The answer is this. Membership size is the only thing that distinguishes large parties from small parties. The internet is pretty much free, and offers little competitive advantage to large, established parties. Emails cost nothing, and the Libertarian Party or the Socialist Alliance Party can send as many emails as Labour or the Conservatives. The web site of a party with 5,000 members can work better than a 100,000 member party's - it's down to design, not numbers. And as the playing field becomes increasingly level, parties will become increasingly dependent on large donations from a smaller number of individuals. As party political tribal loyaties dissipate amongst voters, as they are now doing, smaller parties backed by bigger money become viable candidates for election, for office and for power.

The barrier for new parties is brand recognition. Is the political 'market' like Cola, with brand loyalty owed to the incumbent market leaders being all but inpenetrable for new entrants? I don't think so.

And as the market becomes more open to new national political brands, as traditional memberships continue to shrink, what of democracy?

Edlington needs power and pride, not pity

Back in March I wrote of my experience in South Yorkshire during the miners' strike; I didn't then identify the village I wrote about, but it was Edlington, and it was the men who worked in the Yorkshire Main 3,000 feet below our quarry, some of whom I came to know, who were on strike.

I've never been back, but in a strongly-argued piece in today's Times Janice Turner invites us to visit that place. I can see in my mind's eye exactly the place that Janice describes, though the men I knew 25 years ago may now be dead or decrepit, such is the difference in life expectancies between poor ex-miners and comfortably affluent London professionals. Back then, drugs were a few shared spliffies - giggly grass, or some crumbly hashish, and then with moderation; eight hours between bottle and throttle was a good rule when you were operating machinery that could kill your mates.

The Dude is quite right in terming me a drugs Puritan, for I truly loathe both hard drugs and Skunk, a version of cannabis so auto-nihilistic that like Absinthe it's a quick path to insanity. And it's the drugs in Edlington that Turner blames for the recent horrors there.

Save your pity for Edlington, though. It's not pity its people need, but power in their own community; power to drive-out the druggies, power to deal with their delinquent kids. The people of these pit villages have Localism in their DNA, and their voluntary collectivism will manifest itself in brass bands and fiercely tribal village football teams. And those skills long learned from the NCB and passed from father to son are not yet dead; skills that can strip and rebuild an engine, fabricate and engineer pretty much anything from scrap, improvise and contrive. Garden shed ingenuity is alive and well in Edlington. The potential of these people is so much more than a catalogue goods distribution warehouse. Give them power and pride will follow.

Shit leaves sinking rats

Uber-trougher Eric Joyce is making efforts to distance himself from Labour's sinking rats no doubt with an eye to his constituency majority, already likely to be severely dented by the scale of his Parliamentary expenses claims. But even his most uncritical constituents will wonder at the tone of patent insincerity used by Joyce in his resignation letter;

"As you may know, I told Bob Ainsworth some weeks ago that I intended to step down as Parliamentary Private Secretary (PPS) to the Defence Secretary before the start of the new parliamentary term. This seems to me the least disruptive time to do that. "

Um, yep; on the eve of Gordon's critical Afghan-justification speech

"Labour was returned to power in 1997 on the back of your great success in turning the economy from a weakness into a strength for Labour."

By promising no tax-and-spend, Gordon won over both the City and floating voters. He lied, of course, and abandoned all fiscal prudence by the early oughties.

"The Conservatives, of course opportunistically, think they can convince the public that we have lost our empathy with the Defence community."

The public only has to look at the ARRSE forums to see what the 'Defence community' thinks of Labour; Cameron and his team have actually been responsibly restrained in using this against Labour.

"As you know, two Black Watch soldiers gave their lives during your visit. I do not think the public will accept for much longer that our losses can be justified by simply referring to the risk of greater terrorism on our streets."

Here Joyce twists the stiletto; the image of dead soldiers being packed into body bags whilst Gordon, surrounded by massive security, glad-hands Headquarters staff for the cameras to no operational advantage whatsoever is neatly implanted in readers' minds

"It should be possible now to say that we will move off our present war-footing and reduce our forces there substantially during our next term in government."

As Labour's next term in government is unlikely to be before 2025, if ever, this is the hollowest of wishes

"in my view we should allow our service personnel greater latitude to voice their views on matters which make distinctions between defence and politics pointless."

This harks back to Joyce's own insubordination when serving, in publicly criticising his fellow officers even when ordered to desist. He continues to demonstrate that he has little idea of how the forces work, or of the long road of experience that has led to the current workable arrangements.

"I believe the next election is ours to win, thanks greatly to your personal great economic success."

Either Joyce is lying through his teeth (most likely) or he actually believes this guff, in which case his electors might conclude he's mad, and turf him out on grounds of lunacy.

The Times reproduces his cringingly embarrassing letter in full, whilst the Mail presents its readers with an edited version that omits the silly bits.

Gordon's Harvard teaching plans wrecked

More than anything else, Gordon Brown wants his intellect to be recognised. This is worth more to him than Blair's millions, worth enduring the odium of the British public, and worth dragging the Labour party into a humiliating kicking at the election. When he said he fancied teaching after retiring from politics, he wasn't talking about a Scots primary school. Sadly, most informed commentators in the UK regard his intellect as distinctly second-rate, and not of the sort of quality that would secure him a teaching post outside of the Technical College where he once worked.

Not so the septics. A year ago Brown would have been a big-name ticket for Harvard or Yale, with a chair in European politics perhaps. Well, he's blown it now. Following his Libyan dodging, he's about as popular in the US as a halal Haggis, and Harvard is more likely to hire Abu Hamza today than Gordon Brown.

So where to now, Gordon?

BBC troughers caught out

Paul Waugh had a lovely story in last night's Standard;

Boris Johnson was just settling down on the 8.34am St Pancras-Brussels Eurostar today when he felt a chap desperately pushing through the carriage.

The culprit was keen to make his way through the economy section of the train - where the Mayor of London and his team were seated - towards first class.

It turned out to be none other than John Sweeney and his BBC Panorama camera crew - on their way to follow Boris's 'lay off our hedge funds' campaign in the Eurocrats' capital.

When Boris sardonically asked Sweeney if he was heading "to the front end of the train?", the red-faced BBC man mumbled that he had got a really, really good deal in first class, would not be allowed to eat the free croissants etc etc.

Dying of embarassment, Sweeney then repeated his defences as the pair got off and bumped into each other again in Brussels.

The end of the War Horse

Documentary makers invariably pick from two sorts of film stock to illustrate the fall of France; Stuka dive bombers, and German tanks pitching at speed across some French field. In truth, these were the teeth of the Blitzkrieg, so there's no inaccuracy, but the overuse of the images obscures the nature of the tail of the Heer in 1940. The German army that invaded France and Poland was in reality largely horse-drawn; artillery pieces, supplies, troop transport were all transported to battle pulled by horses.

And Germany was not alone. When Lord Gort travelled to France to take up command of the BEF he took his charger and groom with him; the poor creature (the charger, presumably not the groom) was shot on the quayside rather than be allowed to fall into German hands as Gort returned to England.

The German order of battle for Operation Sealion, the invasion of England, included 4,500 horses to land with the first wave, and a further 57,500 horses with the main invasion force. Only 34,200 motor vehicles were listed. German generals were as concerned with supplies of hay and fodder as with shells.

When allied forces landed again in France in 1944 there was not a single horse in the invasion fleet. The same was not true of the German forces; a shortage of motor fuel and other armaments manufacturing priorities meant that even in 1944 and 1945 the Heer was largely horse-drawn. The carnage at Falaise was admixed of the stench of dead horses and burning armour. But 1945 was the end of the War Horse in European battle.

As we commemorate the 70th anniversary of any number of events in that war over the next six years, commemorating an end to the use of horses in war is not a bad thing to remember.

I still haven't seen the National Theatre's production of Michael Morpurgo's 'War Horse' at the New London, but I reckon anyone who has will agree with the sentiment above.

Harpex still bumping along the bottom

If the recession is over, there's little evidence for it in container trade. August's Harpex continued to bump along the bottom, actually reaching a new low last week.

In a cogent piece in Scotland's Herald, Douglas Hamilton warns of a crisis ahead for German ship operators; Hapag-Lloyd 'needs 1.75bn to stay afloat' (Euros? Dollars?) and he points out that 'Many became wealthy in the years of the boom, including ship owners, bankers and investors, particularly in Hamburg. Germans own 35% of the container ships in operation worldwide, and close to 60 shipping banks and financiers are headquartered in Hamburg.'

With few operators confident enough to order new keels laid, and as older vessels leave the market, there is also the danger that the current overcapacity will swing to a dangerous undercapacity at some stage in the recovery. But no-one ever promised that globalisation would be easy.

C’est la liberté qui est en danger. Le climat va bien.

So says Czech President Vaclav Klaus, one of the very few genuine thinkers in European politics. I commend his August speech (H/T Brussels Journal) to the Aix-en-Provence Summer University, in which he also very accurately characterises the thinking of the Eurocultist elite as including;

- economic (or social) views based on the concept of the so called social market economy (which is the opposite of the market economy);

- views on freedom, democracy and society based on collectivism, social partnership and corporatism, not on classical parliamentary democracy;

- views on European integration, which favour unification and supranationalism;

- views on foreign policy and international relations based on internationalism, cosmopolitism, abstract universalism, multiculturalism and on denationalization.

As well as what he terms 'an irrational attempt to fight the climate'.

Klaus has seen Eastern Europe emerge from one totalitarianism only to risk becoming enveloped by another - one without the gulags, but no less threatening to personal liberty for all that.

Hear him well.

Brown's fingerprints all over Libyan deal

Gordon's status as an expert on the subject of courage is not readily apparent to anyone except perhaps himself. His books on the subject languish at the very bottom of Amazon's UK book chart; Wartime Courage (Nov 2008) at number 145,765 and Everyday Heroes (Jul 2007) at 339,358. Copies can be had for less than a pound.

In contrast, Vernon Coleman's 'Gordon is a Moron: The Definitive and Objective Analysis of Gordon Brown's Decade as Chancellor of the Exchequer' is at a very respectable 55,129.

Of course, Gordon's reputation in the field of courage is not helped by his habit of running away from any hint of controversy or challenge and leaving others to hold the fort. The Libyan affair is no different, and as the document trail suggests Brown's fingerprints were all over the Libyan deal he himself is nowhere to be seen.

Some courage.

Housekeeping

It's only really a bit of fun, but Iain Dale's 2009 blog rankings for Total Politics are now coming out and the RH bar is being updated. I'm pleased that Raedwald remains in the top 100 for two categories - at number 17 for Tory blogs, and at 34 for right of centre blogs. Many thanks to all of you who voted, and I'll try my best to keep the standard up.

'Green is for witches!'

Many years ago at a student party in a Gloucester Road basement flat, an appalled drama school lecturer uttered the immortal words 'Green is for witches!' on encountering our lighting scheme for the night. He was quite right. We should have used red lamps; red is hot, sexy, pulsing, flattering and green is ...well, for witches. In nature it's the colour of life, but as a lightbulb colour it's the colour of putrefaction and corruption .. and witches.

Of course, we needn't have bothered with red lamps. All incandescent and halogen lamps are red, and candle flames are really red. Though they all look white because our brains correct the colour imbalance. Anyone who has used a video camera without mastering white balance will know real lamp colour. Office fluorescents are green - as are the new low energy Mercury lamps - and cast a baleful and sickly light, deeply unflattering and very witchy.

The girls can rest assured that lighting in my home will remain warm, flattering, age-reducing and ... incandescent or halogen. Never shall a baleful green low-energy lamp foul my lampholders or insult my guests.

It's a taste thing.

(Oh, and ignore the piccy; it's the gorgeous Alexia Khadime at the Victoria Apollo in 'Wicked' that my clever and discriminating niece dragged me along to a few weeks ago - totally enjoyable)

Too late the Hejnal mariacki

The Polish 2nd Corps received their mauling at the hands of the German paratroops in the ruins of Monte Cassino; in that bloody meatgrinder of a battle, in which Anders sent even his cooks and bottlewashers to fight, a fourth and final determined assault won the key strongpoint and opened the Allied advance into Nazi Germany's soft underbelly. As the Polish flag was raised in the ruins and a trumpeter played the mournful five-note melody of the Hejnal mariacki, Poland regained her pride and honour.

Stalin's signed order to Beria for the execution of over 14,000 Polish officers at Katyn came to light after the fall of Communism, but Andrzej Wajda's film remains banned in Russia. Today, as Putin joins Merkel at Gdansk to mark the start of the second war, I recall clearly the more recent struggle for freedom at that port; Lech Walesa and the 'Solidarity' movement that sought freedom from Russian socialist totalitarianism.

And this week also, perhaps fifty years too late, the UK also honours the Polish war effort; not just at Monte Cassino, but in the air during the Battle of Britain, and during the liberation of France and the conquest of Nazi Germany. Finally, £300,000 has been raised by public subscription to raise a monument in the National Memorial Arboretum to the Poles. Many of the tens of thousands of Ander's Army who settled here after 1945 will now have passed, and perhaps it's too late for the Hejnal mariacki to sound in Staffordshire with any conviction, but whilst one remains alive it was worth doing.

UK rolling power cuts more than a disgrace

The government published its Low Carbon Transition Plan in July, but only now it seems are journos reading the appendices, which admit to the need for rolling power cuts within eight years because of lack of generating capacity.

Whilst this government has flung away a trillion in Sterling in lunatic social engineering experiments over the past twelve years, it has left the nation with the infrastructure of a third world failed state. It is beyond disgrace that ministers have failed utterly to secure even a minimum energy security for the United Kingdom.

This is more than a trivial matter. This is malfeasance in public office, and ministers should face trial.