Fisheries protection

This is really a post that would be far better written by Richard North; I happily admit the complexities of defence procurement strategies are somewhat beyond me. But perhaps commentors with experience can add some light or correct any howlers. 

It seems we are to get our 200 mile economic waters back in a year's time, and with them the right to decide who fishes them and what and how much is caught there. It's also pretty obvious that the UK fishing fleet has been decimated, and it will take time to build new boats and above all to skill new crew in a highly hazardous industry, to upgrade shore facilities including freezing and processing and establish market and inland transport capacity. So it's pretty obvious that we're going to continue to licence, for a suitable fee I hope, at least for some time, both EU and and any other boats to take fish from our waters after 2019. 

The question arises as to how we are to patrol this - and to stop unlicenced boats from poaching our fish. This is traditionally the job of the Fisheries Protection Squadron; and here my first quote from the UK AF commentary blog:

The Fishery Protection Squadron is constantly out at sea around the UK, and has very little, if any time to wander far away from home. A 42 strong crew is embarked to work to a three watches mechanism. Each ship has an additional allocation of personnel used to rotate members of the crew to meet harmony rules. Personnel on the Rivers could be indicatively expected to spend four weeks at sea and two weeks on land, pretty much all year long. The River batch 1 ships each spend a minimum of 275 days out at sea, with maintenance to the vessels intended to ensure the capability of spending up to 320 days at sea. Normally there is a 9 days maintenance period and a longer one of 16 days, each year. 
  Combined, the three ships have to deliver at least 700 days of activity at sea, and Hunt minesweepers are used to complement the Rivers in fishery protection patrol task, but with no fixed target. Back in 2004, some three Hunt vessels could be routinely expected to be involved in supporting Fishery Protection.

This is a good point to introduce the Rivers - River class offshore patrol vessels, built in two variants; the Batch 1, which cost about £60m each, and the Batch 2, at a cost of £120m each, which are currently coming off the slipway. The difference is down to the fact that Batch 2s are being built to warship standards - with systems, magazines etc that can sustain damage and punishment from other warships, whereas the Batch 1s are pure 'constabulary duties'  vessels. More on the Batch 2s from Think Defence HERE. 

Now this is where the lying, double dealing and manipulation come in. These new Batch 2 vessels are also just about suitable as substitutes for the frigates and corvettes that we don't have, to maintain a global presence. But because of their reduced at-sea capacity, they would need to be forward-based - permanently stationed - in the Caribbean, Gibraltar, Falklands or Bahrain - meaning they would not be available for UK fisheries protection. Yet the MoD seems to be pretending that they could do both tasks at the same time. It's pretty obvious they can't. 

In summary, from next year we'll need a far greater fisheries protection capacity but are building vessels grossly overspecified for FPVs because we need to send them out of the UK. We will not have enough vessels even to maintain our existing FP capacity next year, never mind enhance it. To my simple mind we need more £60m Batch 1s, with a build time of less than a year, that can fly-off UAVs and watch large areas of sea. But we need to place orders now.

Batch 2 River class OPV HMS Forth - just launched and soon to leave for the Falklands ...

It's time to update the Birkenhead Drill

I can still recall the pages of the Annual from which, as a child, I lay on my stomach on the living room floor reading and re-reading 'The Birkenhead Drill'.  This was the story of the formalisation of 'women and children first' back in the 1850s. A troop transport going aground on a dangerous coast, not enough lifeboats, so the regiment drew up on the sinking deck in parade order and watched as their wives and children abandoned ship, facing death and sharks with courage and fortitude. It was one of those youthful lifelong lessons, like never pointing a shotgun at anyone unless you intended to kill them, or saying farewell to a dying pet. I mentally filed this one away; here was my role and duty when I became a man, an English man - to die selflessly with dignity and honour, if required. And certainly not to behave like some cowardly dago or frog. Oh yes I'm serious - this is how we absorbed enduring moral values back then.  

Of course it's now completely out of date. Our priorities today are very different. Today's Birkenhead drill would be something like:-

ORDER OF EVACUATION

1. Persons with protected characteristics in the following order

- LBGT BAME female
- LBGT BAME male
- BAME children
- LBGT differently abled
- BAME females
- BAME males
- Other LBGT
- Other female
- Other differently abled
- Other persons who identify as females or gender fluid, multi genders

2. Non-BAME males in the following order

- Graduates, those that work in the media, academia, public sector workers except Armed Forces
- Cyclists
- Those under 25 and the children of the above
- Remainder of white males, inc. armed forces

3. Non BAME children

-  Children of unprotected-characteristic non-BAME or non-LBGT parents enjoy no protection and the lowest possible priority in evacuation.  

We'll have to change the name of course; how about the Rotherham Drill, or perhaps the Telford Drill?

Russia must be taught its limits

At the risk of sounding like a weary headmaster whose rogue prodigy has yet again let him down, I'm very disappointed with Russia. I've defended Russia (whilst happily admitting that Putin really is just a ruthless thug) and still believe that Russia is Europe's natural ally in a global alignment  of Enlightened North against primitive barbarous South. Personally, I was even prepared to forgive Litvenenko's murder. But this latest affront is an outrage too far.

It's easy to understand why we are the target. The UK is an attractive destination for Russian defectors, ex-spies and refugees from Russomafia thuggery; we have one of the world's best intelligence capabilities, a capable anti-terrorist capacity, a legal system largely free from bribery and corruption and easy access to Europe's best shops. If Russia can make defectors feel insecure in Britain, Putin must think, they will not feel safe anywhere.  

Economic sanctions against Russia are merely cosmetic whilst Europe is dependent on Russian gas. Russia's breach is not so grave as to demand military retaliation. Something in between, I think, would suit; perhaps a cyber attack shutting down Russian transport, broadcasting or banking for 72 hours would make the message clear. Something of that sort. Without any direct link to the UK yet clear to Putin from whom the retaliation came.  

Let's wait and see. 

Update
=======
Wise comments and Tillerson's sacking have led me to believe I've made a right arse of this, and that Russia's guilt is very much more remote than I've assumed above.

Mea Culpa. 

In the UK, hating Islam is quite legal. It's protected by law.

Brendan O'Neill in Spiked has quite properly analysed popular newspaper reports that Jayda Fransen and Paul Golding were imprisoned for 'hating Islam'. It's not true of course - but it's exactly what the police and the establishment want us to believe is true.  

As Brendan points out "The judge’s actual words were that Fransen and Golding had ‘demonstrated hostility’ to ‘people of the Muslim faith’ in their harassing, obsessive campaign around that Kent rape case. That is, to Muslims." And yes, intimidating, harassing, assaulting, abusing people of Islamic faith or people of no faith is a crime and yes they were rightly convicted. What they were explicitly NOT convicted of, because it is not a crime in Britain, was 'hating Islam'. 

In fact, 'hating Islam' is protected by law - specifically by Section 29J of the 2006 Racial and Religious Hatred Act:-

29J    Protection of freedom of expression

Nothing in this Part shall be read or given effect in a way which prohibits or restricts discussion, criticism or expressions of antipathy, dislike, ridicule, insult or abuse of particular religions or the beliefs or practices of their adherents, or of any other belief system or the beliefs or practices of its adherents, or proselytising or urging adherents of a different religion or belief system to cease practising their religion or belief system.

However, in questioning whether crimes should be punished more harshly because they were religiously, or racially, or sexually motivated, Brendan O'Neill raises a cogent and compelling point - has the law got this wrong? If I get the shit kicked out of me because some thug thinks I'm an arse, should he be treated more leniently than if he was triggered because I was a white arse, or a Catholic arse? My injuries are no different, but the law says that if I have no protected characteristic, my body, my safety, my protection is less worthy than another citizen - how can this possibly be right?

What is of equal concern is that police, councils, schools, MPs and journalists are misrepresenting the law in order to convince the public that hating Islam is thoughtcrime. It really isn't. Personally, I regard the Muslim faith as an empty, primitive and worthless belief system, with no redeeming features, that hinders people from progress and from betterment. I think the world would be a better place without it. And I can say all that quite, quite legally. And since British law on these things had to be made in line with all relevant European rights legislation, I can say it quite legally anywhere in Europe. So there.  

Election Fraud - Yes to ID

I freely admit that when national ID cards were mooted some years ago, I was at the forefront in opposing the idea. I still believe that freedom in the UK to walk about without carrying compulsory ID and to live where you wish without the requirement of registering your address with the police are fundamental British freedoms.

I have also long deprecated the degradation of the probity of our electoral system to a state that Michael Pinto-Duschinsky described to a select committee as 'third world'. Three million were on the roll who should not have been, and three million missing who should have been. Our Electoral Quotient - the number of voters per MP - was beyond all first world standards. We can't even achieve the second-rate standard of  + / - 5% let alone the + / - 3% achieved by advanced democracies such as New Zealand. Postal votes, Blair's corruption of democratic integrity, remain a joke mired in fraud and personation. The dilettante fool Cameron failed to correct the EQ issue when he had a chance - sold out no doubt to Clegg's self interest. Liberals will always put party before country. 

However, all credit to Theresa May in acting now, with a wafer thin margin in Parliament, to correct our constituency boundaries. And all credit for the electoral reform that has introduced IVR - individual voter registration. The hurdle that now remains is electoral fraud and personation. 

Electoral fraud is not confined to the Labour Party. Remember Bob Spink. But it is stories like that below that one meets most frequently; they are not myth, even though they may not be as widespread as supposed. 

It is also not confined to lowly fraud in the constituencies; The Telegraph reports how Corbyn's head of social media, Marsha-Jane Thompson, has been convicted of a mass voter registration fraud.  

So, albeit reluctantly, I now support the requirement for secure photo ID at our polling stations before voting papers are given. This system is already in place in Northern Ireland, where free photo ID cards are made available to those without other secure ID. It is an erosion of part of our national congruence, part of the trust that used to prevail when the vast majority in these isles gave great respect to the notion of 'fairness'. That has now passed. Fairness can only now be assured by ID.

Martin Selmayr: Corruption at the heart of Europe

That the EU is institutionally corrupt is not news. The organisation has been known for many years to be riddled with fraud, peculation, dishonesty, misuse of funds, nepotism and an utterly obscure, secret and bent system of chumocracy appointments. Auditors cannot close its accounts, financial records are so incriminating and so embarrassing that they are kept in locked rooms with no public access. Parliamentary expenses are no more than a thin cover for naked theft and fraud, and all this crooked, bent, corrupt filth is hidden from press and public by common consent between the Council, the Parliament and the Commission. The midden stench from the Berlaymont chokes honest breath, and each and every Eurocrat is mired in the putrescent feculence that flows from Brussels. 

So it is simply astonishing that even these slime-dwelling creatures of the eighth Malbolge should find an act so corrupt, so blatantly devoid of any shred of probity, that it evinces a protest. But such is the appointment of Martin Selmayr to the Secretary-General's job - running all 33,000 of the EU's officials. 

Politico.Eu carries the detailed story - the French are fuming because it is alleged the Germans have bribed widely to secure their man in post, a man without any senior Brussels civil service experience. It's as though Jeremy Corbyn appointed Owen Jones as Cabinet Secretary. It also appears that Selmayr was aware he'd got the job before the selection process even started. 

"(Liberation journalist) Quatremer led the charge on Monday as the midday briefing turned into a veritable uprising, with reporters demanding that Selmayr himself come to the podium to answer questions about how he got his new job, whether the vacant positions were properly advertised and if other procedures were followed according to EU regulations.

“These institutions don’t belong to you,” Quatremer snapped at (Margaritis) Schinas in response to his assertion that all questions on the matter had already been asked and answered. “They belong to the European citizens, and it is our perfect right to ask you questions, to repeat the questions as often as we want, without you giving us lessons in morality,” Quatremer said before asking yet more questions.

“You say it was legal; the rules were respected,” he told Schinas. “It doesn’t look legal to me, and as a representative of French public opinion, I tell you there’s a problem here."

Right now they're all flinging enough ordure to ensure widespread coating. Well done, chaps.   

Update 17.27
============
Details of the German bribes are now beginning to leak ...

 

US steel tariffs might mean UK CO2 emissions fall ...

One of the great construction cons, as I've posted previously, is the way in which we account for CO2. This isn't an argument about AGW or the effects of CO2, it's a matter of crooked accounting. Bloomberg's new 'eco' building in London actually cost something like 250,000 tonnes of CO2, but if the steel was made in China and the cement in Thailand (as is very common) only a fraction of that CO2 cost will appear on the UK's national CO2 total.  CO2 is accounted for at place of production rather than consumption.

The result of increased steel tariffs imposed by President Trump will doubtless be Chinese steel producers with a surplus of steel, which they'll seek to dump on world markets, including the EU. The more steel the Chinese dump on Europe, the lower Europe's CO2 emissions under the crooked accounting system.

Every cloud has a silver lining - that Mr Trump will allow us to claim a significant reduction in CO2 emissions will no doubt be of great pleasure to those who believe such measures have any worth at all.

Brexit: No deal, No money.

It was always going to come down to this - a trade deal in exchange for danegeld. Mrs May's speech has done all it could - in uniting public and political opinion at home, as far as is possible. The zealots and bigots of the EU will be stone deaf to suggestions of a pragmatic outcome; they would still rather destroy all Europe than concede favoured access for a single British wiper blade. It's easy for the Brussels bigots to have principles - they don't have national parliaments or voters to bother about, just denunciation for heresy by their fellow unelected officials. 

So to me Mrs May's speech was also what I term a 'Court speech'. In a construction dispute, once it's clear that you're headed to some sort of tribunal settlement, correspondence between the parties is always written for the benefit of the adjudicator / arbitrator  rather than the enlightenment of the other party. So this speech was eminently reasonable, offered real concessions, restated red lines and reminded the EU that nothing is agreed until everything is agreed. One can imagine counsel for the United Kingdom quoting from it extensively before the judges at the International Court in the Hague.

The only thing of which we can be absolutely certain is that the EU bigots will spew May's offer out next week, with insults, sarcasm and barbed invective - all of which will sound nicely absurd, deeply unreasonable and plainly wrong when read-out in the calm of a Hague court in three years time. One of the purposes of Mrs May's speech was to invoke just this sort of idiotic reaction - and idiots such as Verhofstadt, a gobby man who simply can't keep his gob shut, have already started piling up the evidence. 

With the only uncontested payment being £10bn a year or so for the two year transition period (if it happens) everything else in the outline settlement - including the EU's insistence that we can't offset the UK's share of asset values in the EU - is noncontractual, an ex-gratia settlement. It's on the table to pay for a bespoke trade agreement. No deal, no pay. 

Sunday's election in Italy may offer the EU an additional headache, and now Mr Rutte from the Netherlands is also pushing back against the Federasts as the Visegrad group grow in confidence. Now where are the fools who used to lecture us all that 'the British simply aren't interested in the EU'?

Ice giants and snow trolls

Another intermission post whilst we wait for Mrs May, so those of you who want a choc ice or a smoke please slink away now. 

Ice giants
It's a short filler piece at the end of the news here - how Britain can't cope with 5cm of snow. Well, to a point, Lord Copper. Here we can expect snow up to 2m deep in winter, though it's not been over 60cm since I've lived here, and dawn temperatures of -20­­° are not unusual. We all cope and things carry on as normal; the postman ploughs his little van through snowbanks, the refuse vehicle wears snowchains and folk always wear hats and coats inside the car. Plus we have winter tyres and anyone owning a decent tractor or loading shovel can bid to be a snow clearance contractor. The trains don't miss a beat and most of the time the schools stay open. 

So wearily I have to explain for the fifth time that ice and snow events are rare enough in the UK not to maintain a standing provision for them - it's easier to take a minor economic hit from snow disruption every ten years than pay for kit and provision that will be redundant most winters. Austrians aren't ice giants - in fact they're less cold tolerant than most Brits, the houses and pubs here being without exception grossly overheated and actually uncomfortable for an Englishman used to Anglian country houses maintained at an equable 16° in winter except for the spaces immediately in front of the open fireplaces. 

Only the main road through the valley here is salted - all the rest of the steep little single lane ways up the sides are gritted. Salt only works to -15°, and the grit is surprisingly effective once cemented into the ice, a bit like driving on worn sandpaper. 

Snow trolls

In addition to the comments to previous posts I've now had two emails asking me to exclude a commentator whom many contributors find disruptive. I have to say he doesn't upset me and I'm sometimes quite grateful for a sharp puncturing of any hubristic posturing into which I stray. He was also quick to defend Mr Spalton's undoubted very high standards of expertise, erudition and wisdom when this was challenged. I'm also dyed to the core in my commitment to free speech and against censorship, and have warned previously against a real danger of social media becoming an echo chamber, so I embrace dissent as healthy.

On the other hand I am deeply conscious of the offence taken by several loyal and long standing readers, and aware that the person concerned quite naturally can't resist so easily provoking a reaction from many. 

So for now a plea, please, to not get either entrenched or go into full combat mode on this.

Brexit battle lines drawn

In what can only be a co-ordinated campaign by Ultra Remainers, their forces are all on the same battlefield at the same time. Ultra Remainer serving and ex-civil servants, two ex prime ministers, both delusional (one who imagines the ERM and one who imagines the Iraq War were good things), Corbyn's public conversion to a Customs Union, the launch of the EU draft agreement, Barnier, and rude mechanicals and noises off as Andrew Adonis, AC Grayling and the other establishment PTSD casualties set up a louder than usual whine. Blair of course will be spreading his poison from Brussels today - so loathed is he by all sections of the British public there can be few platforms for him here. 

It's instructive that the Telegraph has now adopted the 'Ultra Remainers' term to describe all those establishment figures who have staked their wealth and careers on the EU bandwagon to the extent that they can't let go. With just over a year to Freedom Day, and backed by Soros billions, they will throw everything into the battle. 

Of course I don't mean anything as vulgar as Brexiteers and Ultra Remainers battling on the street. Ultra Remainers don't really do streets and no ordinary Remainer I know could be arsed actually to fight for it, unlike a good proportion of Brexiteers who are rearing to go. No, Ultra Remainers slink along the corridors of power, loiter in mahogany clubs, whisper at black tie events, rat-gnaw at Euro chicken at glittering tables. They thought they governed Britain and are still smarting from the slap they got on 23rd June 2016. They are not prepared to give up power so easily. 

That they are now prepared to so nakedly reveal themselves, from civil servants to their EU handlers, means either desperation or a confidence that they will not be exposed as having conspired against an elected government, will never face sanctions for their actions, will never face a stripping of their honours or a degradation of their estate. If we win this battle, I pray we prove their confidence misplaced. If we lose, I seriously fear the extent of civil disorder that will result. 

  

Whitewater ride for Brexit

There can be no-one left in Britain today, bar the poor 'Grayling' sods who have lost all reason, who imagines that the EU is a benign organisation. After fomenting conflict and death in the Balkans and Ukraine, they're now using the tensions in Northern Ireland to threaten the UK with a border war. Sadly the current Irish PM, Varadker, is a preening queen more at home in the darkness of Dublin's sleazy gay nightlife than in the halls of statesmen. He is a creature of Brussels and will do exactly as he is told, whatever the cost to peace and to the people of Ireland.

If anyone doubted that a fight against the EU is a fight against evil, this surely should convince the doubters.  

Brussels is said to be preparing tomorrow to destroy the progress we all imagined had been secured over Christmas. They will insist we impose a hard border in Northern Ireland, and we will refuse. Their driving the UK towards either a hard exit or a Labour government, a new referendum and a reversal of Brexit is deliberate and inescapable. This is not a negotiating process designed to ensure an amicable future, but unsheathed hostility and territorial aggrandisement, meddling by power-struck fools and amateurs in Brussels with an undistinguished record of failure, conflict, death and disaster in everything they've ventured. They're gambling, and playing with peace in Northern Ireland.

Corbyn is as big a fool as Varadker. His Customs Union stance neither endeared him to Labour remainers not cemented the Labour allegiance of Labour Brexiteers. It has, perhaps, turned the first cog of the ratchet that will lay a trail of 'reason' as to why the UK should not leave the EU, and a reversal of Labour's manifesto position. 

This is a whitewater ride for Britain. Either we find the courage in our hearts to come together to stand against the might of Brussels, or we surrender our wealth and our democracy, abase ourselves on our bellies and beg the unelected officials of Brussels for mercy. And yes, they seriously do believe the latter option is now possible.

Crooked Phil Shiner still a shit

The Telegraph carries the story this morning of how crooked lawyer Phil Shiner, now struck-off, hid his assets to avoid paying for the costs of his campaign of dishonest and utterly morally corrupt  false and manufactured allegations against members of HM Armed Forces, devised as part of a crooked plan to deceive justice and get rich.

"The Insolvency Service discovered a trail that included transferring ownership of his £300,000 house in Birmingham and two guitars he valued at £3,500, to a family trust in December 2016. The terms of the trust allowed him to live in the property. He also sold two commercial buildings for a total of £550,000, transferring the money to his now defunct law firm Public interest lawyers. According to the Insolvency Service, he then took at least £170,000 out of the law firm to top up his pension by almost £95,000, putting the rest into a family trust.

Justin Dionne, Official Receiver from the Insolvency Service, said: “Mr Shiner thought he could be clever by giving away his assets to his family members so that when he declared himself bankrupt there wasn’t anything to pay his creditors with."

The man is an utter shit with no redeeming qualities whatsoever. What concerns me are the number of  Phil Shiners amongst the neolib Metropolitan elite still exercising their crooked avarice.  

I'll post again after the Corbyn speech - which could well prove a watershed for us all

The stench of filth at the heart of government

Over my career I've been offered just about every reward and inducement you can imagine. As the bloke leading the contract award team and the bloke signing-off contractors claims and stage payments, and a lot of the time the bloke leading the design team as well, I am a natural target. Apart from end-of-job boozeups (at which I always contribute to the pot) I've turned them all down. One poor sod charged by his board with 'grooming' me grew desperate after I'd turned down Wimbledon, a hired superyacht, a table at the Cafe Royal and a tank driving weekend and asked me outright what it would take. "Your firm making the most advantageous bid to my principal" was my frustrating answer. I'm not a Puritan, it's just far easier to sleep at night if you're dead straight. Plus you get a reputation, and employers know they can trust you with their millions. 

I guess many of you feel fine about both taking advantage of such offers and properly representing your own side; I've been told many times that such things are just part of the mutual perks of business, just oiling the relationship. For others working in the private sector this may be true - I can only say I can't work with it. 

When of course those gifts, inducements and rewards are made to planners, government officials, elected ministers and those charged with stewardship of the public purse, I'm sure my view should prevail; there should be a zero tolerance of such things. This is not now the case. All that's required is that the recipient of such largesse declare it on a public register. Simon Jenkins in the Guardian exposes the threat to national probity of such corruption;

" ... the hospitality showered on (Westminster Council's Planning) committee’s chairman for 16 years, the amiable Robert Davis, was breathtaking. Five-hundred freebies, including 10 foreign trips, in just three years. At least 150 of these were from a who’s who list of property industry figures. Even Harvey Weinstein is on the list. Entertaining Davis was clearly a Westminster cottage industry. He can hardly have had time to down one glass of champagne before raising another.

The NHS is awash in inducements to doctors to prescribe branded medicines. Arms company boards are stuffed with generals. The banks that fund private finance initiatives keep the Whitehall doors revolving. Declarations of interest by members of the House of Lords read like a lobbyists’ congregation. It clearly pays companies to lobby. The irony is that it was David Cameron who made great play of curbing this in his Lobbying Act. It was, he said, “the next big scandal waiting to happen”. Yet the only scandal was how the act was watered down, and how Cameron’s transparency register for lobbyists was lobbied to oblivion."

Yep for the dilettante Eton-boy Cameron his chums always came first and controlling lobbying went the same way as Localism and all the rest of his early lies. If Blair is the father of fake news and unjust war, Cameron is the father of nepotism, cronyism and corruption. An honour for his hairdresser was a final finger thrust in the air at the rest of us. 

Lobbying carries the stench of filth into the heart of our democratic processes, feeding on the avarice, rapacity and vanity of weak and credulous people in public office. It leaves both the giver and taker beshitten. It must be ended. 

Ignore fake Gouta 'outrage' - it's a smokescreen

With Agent COB revelations bubbling away as a foretaste of more news of Corbyn's past stupidity to come, as the deep establishment has now decided it's time to cut him off at the knees, it's a good time to take a look over to Syria. 

The manufactured horror in the Western media is peaking with 'humanitarian concern' over a rebel held pocket on the outskirts of Damascus. The press forgets that Russian-backed Syrian army re-taking of urban areas is brutal but thankfully rapid, with ground forces clearing house-to-house shortly after bone-numbing artillery and air attacks. Unlike US / Iraqi faffing about, with endless attritional bombardment including US White Phosphorus causing mass casualties because the ground forces won't risk themselves in combat. Not only is Syria's approach ultimately kinder, but the civilian population in the rebel area has already had every encouragement to move out into safety in the Assad-held areas but has chosen to remain. 

Media concern here is manufactured and is a smokescreen. Take a look at the current war map; ISIS have been all but vanquished, the Kurds have occupied territory from the Turkish border to the Euphrates, and the remaining US-backed Islamist rebel enclaves are shrinking. Assad must eliminate the rebel pockets around Damascus before a major offensive against the US / Turkish backed rebels holding land east of Latakia. We are now entering into the most dangerous stage of the war - in which Russian, Turkish, Iranian, Israeli and American ground and air forces are at high risk of direct conflict. 

 Der Spiegel has a good taste of the confusion now emerging on the ground;

What do a counterfeiter from Syria, an Iraqi-Afghan militia fighter under Iranian leadership and a Russian Cossack have in common? More than you might think. They all took part in a strange offensive involving around 300 men on Feb. 7 -- an attack force that was bombed by the U.S. as it crossed a pontoon bridge over the Euphrates River in an effort to capture one of largest natural gas fields in eastern Syria for the Assad regime. Located near the city of Deir ez-Zor, the so-called Conoco field had been wrested from Islamic State (IS) last September by Kurdish-led troops -- with the help of U.S. Special Forces who have been stationed in the area since then.

The Americans are using the Kurds to promote their own interests and the Turks, in addition to their own soldiers, are using anti-Assad rebels to fight on their behalf. Iran, meanwhile, has a diverse mixture of Iraqi, Afghan and Pakistani recruits under its command, in addition to its own people. Since 2013, the tens of thousands of troops under Iranian control have been propping up the regime of Bashar Assad. They are commanded, trained and financed by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, which wants to keep its Syrian ally in power at any price. One of these multinational Shiite militias was also involved in the attack on the Conoco gas field -- a collection of fighters straight out of a dystopian catastrophe film. 

Two local tribal militias also took part in the attack, including one controlled by counterfeiter Torki Albo Hamad. Once wanted in Qatar for murder and document forgery in Saudi Arabia, he was known in Syria for being the leader of a gang of highway robbers. In 2013, Damascus offered him money and impunity if he and his men would place themselves at the service of the regime.

This is the real story; the big boys are now playing out the end game for land, gas and oil, and our sucker media is just too easily distracted by planted fake news intended to turn our focus away from the important stuff. With the BBC still soundly smarting from the spanking it got over its wholly fake White Helmets reporting from Aleppo (there weren't any) they've fallen straight into this one. Perhaps when Czech intelligence officers branded Agent COB 'stupid' they didn't know he was representative of a whole cabal of 'stupid' at the heart of the British establishment.

Give to charity, but don't buy from an OXFAM shop

I am very grateful to commenters on here who have described how to donate efficiently and get aid to the people that need it. Just to prove their point I've been through the accounts filed for 2017 by OXFAM to find possibly the least efficient way yet devised of giving aid - buying those cute 3rd world sofa throws, gourds or greetings cards from an OXFAM shop or OXFAM online. Here's what happens to every £1 you spend:-

You Spend	£1.00
Less 20% VAT*		£0.17
Sub total		£0.83
Less cost of trading		£0.66
Less OXFAM admin costs		£0.05
Sub total		£0.12
Less 5% political campaigning		£0.01
NET TO AID		£0.11
*VAT charged on gifts, cards, commissioned goods but not on donated items
Source: 2017 accounts submitted to Charity Commission

First point is that VAT is chargeable on all those commissioned gift items - but not on donated goods. So if you're buying an old frock rather than a new greetings card, the net will be bigger. Oxfam shops are really just PR - a subtle way of pretending that the charity gets most of its money from public gifts and donations rather than from central government aid. Once you take off the costs of running the shops and the website, and the costs of HQ staff and executives, you're left with just 12p of that £1.00. And then OXFAM skims off a further 5% for its domestic lobbying and anti-poverty campaigning - leaving just 11p to go on aid and development.

For anyone paying £3 a month by direct debit, your yield is a bit better. But be aware that OXFAM has 11 executives earning over £100k pa. Assuming they're all at the midpoint of the first £100k+ band, it takes 37,000 x £3 direct debits just to meet their salary bill each month. News that 1,000 folk have cancelled their DDs as a result of the sex scandal will hardly dent them - unless another 36,000 join them.

Looking at the figures really does bring the waste into sharp contrast. The lesson is, if you want your money to reach the people in need, follow the suggestions in the comments, and please, please, look at the accounts before you spend.

Rejecting moral relativity is not Puritanism

I don't want to ban the Lithuanian hookers who hang-out in the marble-clad cocktail bars of the 4* 'international' hotels around Euston Road. I certainly don't want to ban grid girls, darts dollies or the lady in the bikini on cards of peanut packs. I don't want to stop Max Mosley hiring tag-teams of prostitutes to cater for his deviant S&M sexual preferences (though because he funds the fake press regulator Impress, I do want to retain the right to report on his activities). And as some of my most stably married friends met whilst working together, I certainly don't want to stop office flirting or tea-room romance. 

But I do want to stop 'aid workers' in their 40s, 50s and God help us '60s using their positions of power and trust to sexually use very young girls from some of the most vulnerable, poor, disadvantaged and helpless places in the world. Paying women for sex is not a good thing, but where there is a degree of power equality and willingness on both sides it degrades only those involved. This is not the case in aid zones, in places where the UN flag flies, where the gross disparity in situation of the abuser and the consentor to sex makes it, in my eyes, rape. And please don't tell me that 'those girls look older than 13' or 'those African girls mature quickly, you know' - it makes you part of the problem. 

When I look into the helpless eyes of a person barely out of childhood who has nothing, absolutely nothing, and is dependent utterly on external aid and assistance, I really do believe that any man who harms or abuses such a one is better off throwing himself into the sea with a large rock tied to his neck. They certainly have no place in our society or that of any other people. They are pariah dogs, outcasts, lower than snakeshit. 

The UN has seen ill-disciplined African 'peacekeepers' rape very young girls to a disgraceful extent in DRC and other intervention zones, but at least has a Code of Practice which just needs to be enforced. Unlike Oxfam, which has said in recent days that it does not prohibit its field staff from using local prostitutes on human rights grounds. This is reason enough for DFID to withhold all funding from Oxfam until it not only imposes this COP on all its field staff, but has the structure to enforce it. If Oxfam aid workers want to use whores, they can wait until they get back to London, Brussels or Copenhagen. 

Boris laid an egg fit for a curate

Yesterday was vintage Boris. I usually imagine him assuring anxious aides who are begging to see the text just hours before a speech is due to be delivered "Don't worry. Got a few ideas scribbled on a napkin. I'll wing the rest ...". Yesterdays speech, I suspect, was actually written in advance and cleared first by Mrs May. No cod Latin, no jokes about the War and only a hint of seaside postcard (sorry, Thailand). 

There was also nothing for Remoaners to pick apart; it's hard to criticise someone bestowing hope, love and best wishes to everyone. What are they to protest? "No, we don't want good relations with the EU, we want, er .." so it was clearly written as a proper speech, all sunlight, optimism and rolling uplands. That's fine. I can buy into that. But it's not premier league stuff - mostly forgettable in ten minutes. 

With one exception. The edible part of this curate's egg was the Foreign Secretary's warnings of the danger of a nation polarised by the Brexit vote. He's right. It's not enough to dismiss the 48% with "You lost. Get over it."

First, we have to leave. All the Soros money and the Gina Millar show need to play out, the Lords need to make their red leather benches damp and we need to get to March of next year. After that we have serious work in re-building a nation; those 48% are Britons, our brothers and sisters, with a share in and commitment to the United Kingdom every bit as great as ours (if mistaken or confused). Boris was spot-on with this one warning; our most urgent task after Brexit is not to secure trade deals, but to rebuild One Nation.

A post Brexit vision? About time ...

News that the cabinet's Brexiteers are to go on tour doing some speechifying on the benefits of a post-Brexit Britain. And about time. If stories are true that Rudd and Hammond have been restrained from spreading gloom whilst this is going on, then all the better. So just to get the ball rolling, here are just a few of my own hopes for our post-Brexit realm;

Exemplar
An example to Europe and the world of fairness, equity, tolerance and the rule of law. One nation needs to stand apart and show what freedom, justice, liberty and democracy really mean, particularly at a time when Europe's nations again face the most fundamental challenges to their national and cultural identities. Our law, our courts, our judicial independence, our language and our values stand head and shoulders above the pygmies of the Berlaymont.

Alacer
Europe's sclerotic and glacial systems of governance, dependent on serried ranks of bureaucrats reaching consensus in the absence of democracy, doesn't make for an agile government, to abuse the middle management buzzword de jour. I don't really like the term agility; it's too much like what monkeys do, rather than what statesmen should do. So alacrity then - from the latin alacer - that without Europe's lead weight we may respond and react to world events with greater speed and clarity.

Defensor
A nation with teeth that can bite - military, of course, but diplomatic, cultural and scientific, too. We are defending not just an Island but a system of post-enlightenment rational belief, free speech and freedom of expression and a way of life. We remain foremost in technological development. We must be proud of who we are and what we stand for - and that includes Britons of every creed and colour, across the political spectrum. Integration and social coherence within the realm are vital.

Mercator
A favourite word, this, embracing both merchant / trader and the dominant system of map projection vital to understanding world trade. The last time Europe imposed a trade boycott on the UK, back in old king Henry's time, our merchants simply sailed farther and wider to find replacements, and in the process established a system of global trade that sustains the nation today. These early merchant venturers also developed capitalism as we know it today, with the practice of jointly investing in speculative voyages in a way that shared risk and reward. You've really only to stand and listen in a crowded, beer puddled, jostling City pub on a Thursday night to find that we haven't lost it. 

Domesticis
Leaving the EU will also mean divorcing our metropolitan elite from their EU support network; they face a separation from the main body of the cancer that has eaten at our society and people. Our abused working class, so despised and feared by the privileged neolibs, can rightly take credit for winning - and need be ever more vigilant in protecting universal suffrage and the secret ballot from the wheedling, corruption and manipulation of the Grayling class. Just as their efforts in two world wars won hard-fought rewards, they will also bear the immediate brunt of leaving the EU, and we must be absolutely explicit that we will make changes as fundamental as were the NHS and post-war housing to ensure they are valued and rewarded, and that the benefits of Brexit don't simply accrue to the sharp-elbowed metropolitan elites who suck the life out of everything else.

If you read just one thing today, read this

I cannot write without subtracting from the clarity and cogency of AEP's column in the Telegraph today. Please, if you read just one thing today, read this.

As a private citizen, I have made up my mind. The current negotiations with the EU have become intolerable. Britain should walk away immediately. It should ask for nothing from Brussels beyond a smooth handling of the switch-over and common-sense treatment of technical issues such as landing rights, Euratom, and cross-border finance. It should withhold the exit fee until the EU has complied. 

Edit - just this once...

"The nightmare recurs. Call it the British Versailles. Theresa May is ash-white and exhausted after sixteen hours of cliff-edge talks. The grim ordeal lasts deep into the night on Friday, October 19.
Britain’s friends around the table at the Justus Lipsius – named after the stoic Flemish author of "De Constantia" – wince with pain and sympathy at the emotional spectacle. Yet they say nothing. The sum of the European Council is of a different character from its parts.

The document sitting before Mrs May spells out the terms. There is no bespoke deal, and no market access for services. The "Canada plus" model has degenerated into a deformed variant of "Canada colonial" with a permanent EU veto over larger areas of British law and policy. It is the worst of all worlds: a limited trade deal under draconian conditions. Medieval historians would call it suzerainty.

The ghastly error of British negotiating strategy is laid bare. Either Mrs May signs, or she walks away and invokes the sovereign fall-back option of the World Trade Organisation. But by then it is already too late for the WTO. The customs machinery cannot safely be activated in the four months left before the Article 50 process expires in March 2019. There is not enough time for the necessary global diplomacy. With Treasury warnings of a sterling crash and a "Gilts Strike" ringing in her ears, Mrs May buckles to overwhelming pressure.

It is a diplomatic defeat of the first order. It brings about three quarters of the alleged trend damage to UK economic growth suggested by Treasury forecasts – 6pc of GDP over the long run under a free trade pact – without securing the central objective of British parliamentary self-government.

Note that the alleged damage would be only slightly more at 8pc under a WTO clean-break, an option that would still be possible (only just) if set in motion today. So even if we accept the Treasury figures – as a Gedankenexperiment  – the difference between a WTO deal that upholds British independence and a "Canada colonial" deal that ties down the UK in perpetuity is barely noticeable when stretched out over fifteen years.

Perhaps my dreams deceive me. Perhaps there will be a fudge of sorts. But what if the nightmare comes to pass?  Paris and Berlin have not retreated one millimeter from their core condition: that there can be no deal on services unless Britain accepts the Norway model (EEA). The UK must swallow the single market package, with euro-judges, and open-door migration, and EU directives forever.

The torrent of leaked EU strategy papers from Brussels are a disturbing foretaste of the relationship that awaits the UK as a "demandeur", pleading for leniency from a position of psychological defeatism. They strongly indicate that the EU is not only insisting on an asymmetric deal that locks in its £80bn goods surplus with the UK, but also that Britain should be bound by sweeping extra-territorial control and should pay annual tribute for the privilege of its own infeudation. It is not a Canada option at all. Canada would have rejected such terms without compunction.

Theresa May hopes to muddy the waters, arguing that the summit "breakthrough" in December refutes the critics and shows that deals can be struck after all. The cold truth is that she gave way on almost everything, and agreed to pay an £50bn exit fee on EU terms, largely in order a secure a transition that does not even allow Britain to strike fresh trade deals with the rest of the world.

As we are learning fast, even this transition is toxic.  The EU’s text threatens suspension of market access, the imposition of tariffs, curbs on banks, and the loss of landing rights, if Britain drags its feet on implementing new laws over which it has no control or is deemed to have violated transition terms, with the EU acting as judge and jury.

This follows leaks of internal papers last week that spoke of Britain almost as a pirate state, so depraved that it might start poisoning its own workers in chemical plants or starting belching black coal smoke from power stations in order to gain a competitive edge after Brexit. 

The text leaves no doubt that the EU aims to control Britain’s future tax policies, regulations, employment laws, and industrial regime, in fine detail – beyond any normal governance codes set by the WTO and the OECD – and that this deviant island should be watched, coerced, and brought to heel. These demands are self-evidently at odds with the supremacy of Parliament. In my opinion the language is indecent.

Some on the Remain side might say "I told you so", but such an argument will not carry them far in British politics since most voters ultimately put some value on such old-fashioned notions of country and national honour. The tribe of footloose "Anywheres" with a high reflexive loyalty to the EU idea, to borrow from David Goodhart’s sociology, makes up 20pc of the population, and most would probably display deep reserves of patriotism if push ever came to shove. Real "Global Villagers" with few qualms about the humiliation of their own country are just 3p

 

My question to Anna Soubry and the hard Remainers in Parliament is how they imagine that Britain would function as a colony inside the EU single market over time, and under the sort of regime that Brussels has in mind. Is it not a formula for perpetual conflict? Is it not bound to further poison relations between Britain and Europe, and to compound error upon error?

I say this as somebody who previously supported a Norway model, at least for a decade until the UK had secured other trade deals and become less vulnerable. Yet events have moved on and trust has been shattered.  As ex-EU commissioner Lord Hill told the House last week, the status quo ante no longer exists.

The act of Brexit has itself changed the political dynamic in Europe, leading to a dirigiste, anti-market, anti-City, and anti-innovation lurch in Brussels – which must lower the EU’s economic speed limit over time, nota bene. It is therefore even more urgent for Britain to reassert self-government. “For an economy that is as dependent as ours on services, how could we in all seriousness subcontract all our rule-making to someone else?” he asked.

The leaked EU documents tell us that Germany and France will not allow the UK to have a Norway deal on anything like Norwegian terms because the UK economy is much larger and – in their mind – poses a much greater danger to the EU project. Our trading rights could be revoked at any moment without the normal protections of the WTO."