AV Referendum Campaign Brings Out Best in Politicians

This weekend saw the long anticipated kick-off of the 5 May referendum to change the British voting system from First-Past-The-Post to Alternative Vote. Most people seem either not interested at all - one respondent to a recent questionaire thought AV stood for audio-visual and couldn't for the life of him comprehend why it was necessary to hold a referendum on that -, or haven't made up their minds yet. The latter would, I should imagine, relish politicians, after all our elected representatives to inform them of the benefits and disadvantages of changing or keeping the system. Incidentally, the former group seems rather large, which is why it struck me as foolish not to include a threshold requirement in the referendum bill. I can see why the Government wouldn't, after all it more than likely would have meant the referendum would be invalid if it were held and the Liberal Democrats wouldn't like that. But now it means that the, say, 30% of the electorate that bothers to vote will end up making the decision on one of the most radical changes to the British constitution.

But that's besides the point of this post. Less important perhaps, but nonetheless indicative of the thought and effort politicians put into this momentous referendum campaign is the fact that until now most of the speeches and comments politicians, or indeed random picked-up-off-the-street celebrities, made have consisted almost entirely of ad-hominem attacks on their opponents. Baroness Warsi, the Chairman (BBC, shouldn't that be chairperson in Post-Modern speak or at least Chairwoman?) of the Conservative party came out swinging:

"Too often, those people tend to be the ones who vote for extremist parties. This means AV could see candidates pandering to extremist voters - because to win a seat they will need to win the support of people whose first choices have already been eliminated."  ... "The long-term effects of that are clear: more votes, more power, more long-term legitimacy for the BNP and other fringe parties,"

 Thus in a few short sentences, Her Ladyship manages to imply that anyone who votes yes is a closet supporter of the BNP. In response Chris Huhne, the Lib Dem Environment Secretary and a Cabinet colleague of Baroness Warsi, saw-and-raised her comments by deigning to compare the Baroness to Goebbels, that role model of those lacking in anything true and meaningful to say:

"This is another example of the increasingly Goebbels-like campaign from the anti-AV people, for whom no lie is too idiotic given the truth is so unpalatable to them. AV makes lazy MPs work harder and reach out beyond their tribe. It is what Britain needs to clean up politics."

One would now expect David Cameron, the Prime Minister and therefore both mr. Huhne's and Baroness Warsi's boss, to sit the bickering children down and tell them to play nice and stop comparing each other's side to fascists. Yet mr. Cameron himself is skirting the lines of decency himself and in any case can't be too forward in the campaign as he has the improbable task of holding together a Cabinet made up of supporters (Lib Dems) and opponents (Tories) of AV. And to go head first into campaining for a side that is calling on people to vote no just to spite Nick Clegg might not be the wisest of courses.

One of the few politicians who is trying, in the end in vain, to stick to facts and arguments is Ed Milliband, but even he has to frame the entire line of his speeches around whether it's good or bad to campaign with Nick Clegg or defeat Nick Clegg or win for Nick Clegg or vindicate Nick Clegg or do something or nothing for Nick Clegg. But we can praise him for attemting to aspire to dignity, even if he fails. Maybe someone will take his cue from mr. Milliband and stop mentioning mr. Clegg at all and instead focus and what's really at stake, the ruin of a system that has provided Britain with stable governments for centuries in favour of a voting system that works so well that it's used by three countries around the world, of which one does not allow you to rank more than three candidates at a time (Papua New Guinea for those wondering).

What To Keep Secret, Or What Not To Keep Secret

As I wrote in an earlier post back in December, I do not believe in the absolute right to openess, the right to know anything about everything and vice versa. Sometimes, the masses benefit from more ignorance, from not knowing certain things, but secure in the blissful hope that someone somewhere does know and is doing something about it. Without this seemingly naive state of mind, a man for his worries would lose his sanity. That is why, when I visited the Guardian website this morning I was filled with apprehension when I saw this article by the eminent and admirable historian Thimothy Garton Ash on this subject.

I was struck by this slight feeling of dread because the Guardian was one of the main publishers of the Wikileaks troves of the often useless but sometimes profoundly significant state secrets. With this in mind I expected mr. Garton Ash to be true to Guardian form and call for the absolutism of transparency. And to some degree he does, praising the new OpenLeaks website set up by a former WikiLeaks member. But the gross part of his article is a call for a new paradigm in how organisations, both government and private, handle and classify secrets. He writes that everybody has secrets:

I know of no organisation in the world that is 100% transparent. Everyone has something they want to hide – and some things they can reasonably argue that they are justified in hiding. Often the two do not exactly coincide. Witness, for example, the hilarious spectacle of Julian Assange protesting furiously at leaks from inside WikiLeaks.

 So it is indeed.

Mr. Garton Ash goes on to suggest to principles in what should be kept secret and what shouldn't.

First, be open about your grounds for secrecy, transparent about your non-transparency. Have clear criteria and be ready to defend them. They should be able to withstand the following, somewhat paradoxical test: if this piece of information became public, could you credibly explain why it should not have become public? ... My second guiding principle is: protect less, but protect it better. There is a vast amount of stuff that governments and organisations keep secret for no good reason.

 As the WikiLeaks hoopla proved - and Sir Humphry in Yes, Minister would have approved of - governments keep secrets that are so unsensitive that they should have been published just to amuse the population and put some second rate comedians out of a job. If, instead, the Garton-Ash principles were to be applied than we would be surer that what is secret is secret for a reason and not simply because the for-presidents-eyes-only stamp hadn't yet been used that morning. I doubt anything will change soon, but the suggestions made in the article are very interesting indeed, and deserve further consideration.

Ban Pro-Paedophilia Organisation

One of the more peculiar results of the Dutch tradition of tolerating dissenting opinions and mostly harmless divisive activities like cannabis use is the existence of the a political organisation carrying the banner of legalising paedophilia. This group, called Vereniging Martijn, has been around since the 1980s and has long flown under the radar of public outrage, with the only organised opposition coming from equally despicable far right, extremist parties and clubs. That is until late last year when, after the arrest of a serial child abuser in Amsterdam who turned out to have been a Martijn member, the PvdA, the Dutch Labour Party, raised (Dutch language alert) the matter in Parliament and proposed banning the organisation.

Since then little progress has been made on the matter, but events earlier this week should be a catalyst for action. Yesterday morning a 67 man was arrested on suspicion of possessing enormous quantities of child pornography, and wonder of wonders, he turned (Dutch language alert) out to be a member of Martijn. And not just a member, he was the president of the organisation. The name of this human abberation - that you may know him and his sins - is Ad van den Berg. Of course, in the interest of common decency - to which I adhere even when men like this do not - I should stress that Van den Berg has not been convicted, he is as yet only a suspect.

Still, his arrest should spurn the Dutch state into action against Martijn. The organisation's reaction to the arrest of its president should be a clarion call for outlawing it: they wrote on their website that Van den Berg had been arrested by the 'Moral Authority Police' (Moraalpolitie). In the face of the stongest evidence of his guilt, Martijn's instinctive response has been not to sever all ties that bind them and their president, but to impugn the motives of those appointed by the representatives of the Dutch people to carry out their democratic will. Instead of admitting he appears to have broken the law, they defend Van den Berg, the direct opposite response from how any honest and legitimate organisation would have reacted.

I am straining myself not to come out against Martijn and paedophilia in stronger terms, but I believe calling them monsters and scum and human garbage would give them a stature they do not deserve, they do not stand apart from society and its norms and we should not honour them by comparing them to any romanticised outlaws. They are men - overwelmingly, I don't think there are many women paedophiles - and they will have to adhere to the democratically made laws of man which have made paedophilia and child pornography illegal. And should they invoke natural law or human rights, then let us answer that natural law demands the protection of the weakest by the strong, and children are weakest of all. As for human rights, children, anywhere in the world, have the right to the maintenance of their innocence, the right to wonder bright and wide-eyed and no one has the right to steal that from them under the guise of 'consensual' sexual gratification.

Let us seize the moment and ban such an organisation that advocates the ruination of childhood. Their response to the arrest of their president Ad van den Berg has shown us that they will never accept that society will not stand for their desires, so let's make it as clear to them as possible. Ban Vereniging Martijn, that blot on the honourable national tradition of toleration of dissent.

Don't Let Children Pick Their Teachers

Every so often - or more regularly than that, it being one of the most discussed and tampered with government issues - a new proposal is made for the better function of education and the better running of schools. Usually such innovative ideas pit the teaching unions against the government of the day, be it Labour or the Tories ruling the Whitehall roost. The teaching unions you see are as territorial and defensive of their garnered rights and privileges as the most hidebound little england squire. But not this time - oh no! - for the suggestion that has been put forth now is so ridiculous as to unite those disparate camps.

Maggie Atkinson, the Children's Commisioner for England, has said that "more schools should involve pupils in the recruitment of teachers." She wants to let children have a say in who should be hired to teach them. Luckily, the unions are dead set against it, saying, rather diplomatically, "Putting pupils on an interview panel or in direct control of teacher recruitment undermines the respect and authority of teachers." I would put it stronger than that: it would be like having the animals choose the butcher. They would pick the vegetarian, who would spare them the sting of the knife and the thud of the cleaver.

We were all children once, so let us go back to that time when we were young and we followed, at times mopingly, the commands and assignments of our teachers. Let us then ask ourselves, without knowing what we know now, older and in our imaginings at least the smallest bit wiser, what we should have done had we been allowed to choose our teachers. Ask yourselves, who would you pick if posed the following alternative teachers:

The one who assigns us homework, or the one who doesn't?
The one who lets us come in as late as we want, or the one who wants us to be on time?
The one who lets us talk and play games in class, or the one who wants us to do our work?
The one who uses what little power he has to punish us when we do wrong, or te one who lets us get away with anything?

Of course, for children the answer isn't hard to come by. Concerning home work for example, the result of the survey cited in teh BBC article was: "a quarter [of interviewed pupils] thought setting homework was important." So by extension, the other 75 percent would have rather just hired a teacher who doesn't particularly care for homework. I wonder why?

A child, though willing to learn, cannot yet see the future immaterial consequences of not learning in school. He can only see the immediate consequence of being able to do what is fun and pleasurable, what he wants to do, not what someone else wants him to do. So in the interest of the next generation, now in schools or on the cusp of starting, lets leave the hiring of teachers to Heads, hiring commisions or boards of governors, shall we, and let the pupils get on with learning now so they may one day be able to make the choice for their children.

Lib Dems By Any Other Name

How bitter it must be to be Nick Clegg. Not that he is not a kind and lovely gentleman, or is not, I have no idea of that, having never met him; and one should not judge, whom one has never met, unless his words and actions justify it. No, the reason for the bitterness that mr Clegg must feel on almost a daily basis is that he can do no good. The reason he can do not good is, in turn, that he is the leader of the Liberal Democrats, a party that serves no purpose, other than to be. Vainly it has sought an aim, a goal to aspire to, something to be its raison d'etre. And finally last May it found that very thing. The Lib Dems would join the coaltion with the Conservative Party, showing once and for all to the voters, who for decades of elections had hesitated to vote for them, that they were a party of trust, a party of government, and not some foolhardy attempt at block-headed opposition.

Now, not a year after the joining the David Cameron-led experimental mixer they are having profoundly disturbed second thoughts. For what has come to pass, the Lib Dems have realized that as the very minor partner in the coalition their positive pre-election policy ideas - so far as they had any - are not acted upon, and their negative policies, the things they were against - and of these there were a great many - are. The one thing, the single most important issue, they have gotten out of giving mr Cameron the keys to no. 10 is rapidly running into trouble too. The upcoming voting reform referendum was always a must-win campaign for the Lib Dems, but it is looking increasingly likely that the no vote will prevail.

Losing the referendum, mr Clegg knows, though he will not admit it, will almost certainly cost him the leadership of his party, and with it his cushioned seat as Deputy Prime Minister. Indeed it may result in the collapse of the entire coalition government. So what to do? The Lib Dems, being a party instinctively suspicious of anything that smacks of tradition have hit on the idea of simply changing the name and logo of the party:

The rebranding exercise due to get under way next month will involve a total rethink of the party's direction and could even include changing the name and logo, insiders said.
Some party strategists believe the name should change to include the word "social", in order to reassure members and voters that it is more left wing.
The image of a bird in flight could go in favour of a new logo emphasising fairness and social justice, such as a scale.

Yes, in all their concerted brilliance the Lib Dem cosmetics board thinks that in this day of flash and style-over-substance, some plastic surgery on the visage will be enough to restore the voter confidence that has been haemorhaging for years.

Well, I wish them good luck and all the best, but I can't forget those immortal lines of Shakespeare's:

What's in a name? that which we call a rose
by any other name would smell as sweet
(Romeo and Juliet, Act II, scene II)

Or to be less flattering, since I do not think the Lib Dems that sweet smelling, rather odorriferous actually, I recall what Barack Obama said about Sarah Palin:

You can put lipstick on a pig, it's still a pig. You can wrap an old fish in a piece of paper called change. It's still gonna stink.

Ed Milliband Will Own Any Outbreak of Violence Today

In terms of weather it's not such a lovely day today as it was at the end of the week, but all in all it's not such a bad day for a good, old-fashioned, recalling-the-Thatcher-era demonstration. And indeed, it appears that a lot of people have responded to the anti-cut calls of the unions, if the BBC is correct at least 100.000 or perhaps even 500.000 public-sector workers are marching from the Embankment towards Hyde Park. If even the smaller estimate is accurate than the break away protesters, intend on violence and nihilistic destruction for its own anarchic ends, are a tiny minority. These hedonistic close-minded extremists are not latter-day Robin Hoods but class-warriors, attacking shops and even the Ritz hotel, not because these establishments necessarily support the cuts, but simply because they are, or are perceived to be, upper or middle class.

We can only hope - though if the protests last autumn are anything to go by, hope against hope - that those hundreds of thousands on their way to Hyde Park keep their peace with the street. I expect that by far most of them will, but the danger is the end of the day when, at once tired and full of spirit, the organisers tell them to go home but they have to wait to leave the park. Kettled by gates and fences, tempers on the rise, what little spark will set off the conflagration? We saw the same thing happen last time, when the end of the organised programme sounded the knell of peaceful protest and resulted rapidly in the setting afire of Parliament Square and the defenestration of the Office of Revenue and Customs.

If this direst of scenarios comes to pass, Ed Milliband will own the violence and the bill of public outrage will be his to settle. The Labour leader won't be responsible for the uproar - only those protesters who turn to violence will be responsible for their actions - but Mr. Milliband, by appearing at the rally, and speaking to the crowd, has aligned his party with the demonstrators and in the perception of the public watching the unfolding at home on the news tonight he stands on the side of destruction. To be true, this would be undeservedly so, but so it will be. So for the sake of Her Majesty's Loyal Opposition, if nothing else, let's hope again that peaceful protest will be the watch word of the day, and not violent demonstrations.

David Cameron Compared to Tony Blair

Yesterday David Cameron rose in the House of Commons to make the case for British leading involvement in the enforcement of the no-fly zone over Libya. He did so on the legal basis of UN Security Council resolution 1973, which I don't think anyone doubts authorizes states to do exactly that. Two questions remain: the first, whether a no-fly zone won't inevitably, through mission creep, lead to putting boots on the ground far beyond the small scale necessary to conduct airstrikes - i.e. SAS troops or US Army Rangers providing targeting information; the second question is whether, although legal, the no-fly zone enforcement operation is morally justified.

I have made my opinion on the first question clear already - although I should add that over the last couple of days I have found myself feeling less and less stringent about the matter. With regards to the second question we might use the doctrine of the just war theory to 'measure' the moral justification for the mission. I hope to do so in a future post - or posts - as it will take some homework.

This post is not so much to do with the military operation, but rather with the political operating of Mr. Cameron in this context. BBC's Nick Robinson comments that the Prime Minister's performance in the Commons is so very unlike that of Tony Blair in his debates on the Invasion of Iraq in 2003:

This is not Iraq. Nothing like it. I am not Blair. Nothing like him. ... His [Cameron's] performance was low key rather than impassioned. It came in a debate which will end with a proper vote (rather than the vote on the Iraq war which ended with a more technical parliamentary voting procedure). It followed the publication of legal advice.

Mr. Robinson has a point. The PM set out his case meticulously and calmly, without relying on such misty, half-legalistic rhetorical flourishes that his New Labour predecessor employed.

Comparing Mr. Blair and Mr. Cameron directly is not doing an injustice to Gordon Brown, who - sadly for him - was but an interim ruler between the Blair/New Labour years and the Cameron/Coalition era - although the conservative in me hopes Mr. Cameron soon gets to turn it into a Cameron/Conservative era. The two men, as politicians, are also quite different characters. Mr. Blair was perhaps the perfect politician in the American style: prone to grand standing, media savvy and with the slightest hint of man-of-the-people-populism. On the other hand, Mr. Cameron is a true British politican, composed, respectful of Parliament and its many priviliges, and honest and open towards the public, without having to resort to excessive spin.

What Mr. Cameron should not forget, however, is that the greatest British politicians of the broadcast media age, Winston Churchill, Harold Macmillan and Margaret Thatcher combined that British Parliamentarianism with rhethorical strength. They understood that if truth is expressed beautifully, it is so much more powerful a weapon. Mr. Blair knew this, and for his other failings would have joined their ranks. The Prime Minister can still do so, and I hope he does.

Hillary Right To Want Out

After weeks of dithering, waffling and cloaking oneself in silence, the Obama White House has finally decided to speak out forcefully against the brutalities inflicted on Libya by its ruler, Colonel Muammar Gadaffi. But why to do so at this late stage is a pertinent question. After media attention shifted to the aftermath of the Japanese earthquake and tsunami, Col. Gadaffi has used the global blind spot he found himself in to effectively snuff out the already flickering candle of rebellion in the North African state. The rebels have been pushed back to their last stronghold of Benghazi and if the boasts are true, tomorrow will see their defeat in that city.

With the collapse of the rebellion imminent, the imposition of a no-fly to support it is like the umpire climbing into the ring after one of the boxers is already knock-out on the floor. David Cameron and Nicholas Sarkozy have been calling for international intervention for weeks now, but Barack Obama refused to support them. He even went so far as to send out his Secretary of Defence Robert Gates to rebuff publicly those clamouring for a no-fly zone, while fully aware of the fact that without the US intervention would be impossible. Yet inexplicably the US now wants a no-fly zone.

Until now, the members of the US Cabinet had kept the ranks closed, standing behind their President as is their duty. But in any organisation divisions will exist and this is true for the White House. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, perhaps the most high-profile politician in the US besides President Obama, now appears to have had enough with the constant policy changes:

Fed up with a president “who can’t make his mind up” as Libyan rebels are on the brink of defeat, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is looking to the exits. ...
Clinton is said to be especially peeved with the president’s waffling over how to encourage the kinds of Arab uprisings that have recently toppled regimes in Egypt and Tunisia, and in particular his refusal to back a no-fly zone over Libya.

I have not made a secret of my oppostion to intervention, but I should have mentioned that it is not the worst option. The worst option is not to make a decision, exactly what Mr. Obama has been doing - or not doing. Crises thrive on indecision, especially if that is the course of the mighty. The minnows cannot act and the wicked walk away with the prize. Foreign diplomats think in this manner:

The tension has even spilled over into her dealings with European diplomats, with whom she met early this week. When French president Nicolas Sarkozy urged her to press the White House to take more aggressive action in Libya, Clinton repeatedly replied only, “There are difficulties,” according to Foreign Policy magazine.“Frankly we are just completely puzzled,” one of the diplomats told Foreign Policy magazine. “We are wondering if this is a priority for the United States.”Or as the insider described Obama’s foreign policy shop: “It’s amateur night.”

So Ms. Clinton, a proud and - still - ambitious politician, can no longer abide the lack of courage amongst the inhabitants of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. And she's right to think about leaving them to their own mess. In the back of her mind, is she still pondering taking over the top job at some point? We can only wonder.

No-fly Zone is Intervening

Over the last few weeks, as the crisis in Libya is fast taking on the visages of civil war, the international community - or to be more precise, the Western World - has been considering how to respond. Sanctions have already been imposed, refugees aided and the forces of stern rethoric deployed. Yet, as Colonel Gaddafi has no intention of leaving his bedouin tent any time soon, the debates are centering on whether to intervene militarily. In an earlier post, I dismissed the possibility and beneficial results of foreign military action, but Western leaders - whether from the UK, US or EU - do not share my negative outlook on the principle. What we do share are doubts about the problems of actually intervening in practice, if only because the UN Security Council is unlikely to sanction such a move.

What seems most likely, at the moment, and if any military operation is to take place at all, is for the UN to give the green light to the imposition of a no-fly zone in Libya to prevent Col. Gaddafi ordering his air force to bombard civilians. This option was muted by David Cameron some weeks ago and then quietly withdrawn as the US would not support the suggestion, saying that for it to be successful, a no-fly zone would have to be supported by ground forces. But now Dr. Liam Fox, the British defence secretary has again voiced British proposals, saying

rather than "taking out" air defences in a pre-emptive strike, Nato leaders could say that, if an enemy locked its air defence radar on Nato planes, they could "regard that as a hostile action and take subsequent action".
He added: "That's one military option but there are other military options that we have used."

Dr. Fox seems to suggest that a no-fly zone would be an action short of military intervention. If this is indeed what he is saying than he appears to be living in a fantasy world - harsh terms, I know, but appropriate - where a man as clearly deranged as Muammar Gaddafi will not provoke the forces enforcing the zone by ordering his own planes into the air, or will desist from placing his anti-air batteries in civilian-populated areas. In the event of the former, enforcing planes would have to engage Libyan aircraft, as clear a military action as any in my book. In the event of the latter scenario, taking out those batteries would without the slightest doubt result in civilian casualties, giving Col. Gaddafi a much needed excuse to excoriate the West. To prevent atrocious numbers of casualties would require ground forces to coordinate airstrikes.

So a no-fly zone is an intervention by its very nature and we should not go down that path, as even Dr. Fox agrees. A civil war is a matter of internal sovereignty and until it spills over into other countries or affects British citizens, Britain has no right to intervene. Col. Gaddafi recognises this and it is indicative that when a BBC team was detained in Libya, the only one of the three reporters who was not physically assaulted was the one British citizen, as this would have given Britain an excuse to press for intervention.

One other way to gain the right to intervene is to take the step France took today to recognise the rebels as the legitimate government of Libya. This would give the rebels the sovereign power to ask for foreign military assistance.

Anti-immigration Sentiments Alive and Unwell in Britain

'A spectre is haunting Europe', so begins the Communist Manifesto, 'the spectre of communism.' But communism has given up the ghost (yes, pun fully intended) and no longer roams the continent clanging about claiming to be the voice of the people, of the common man and the worker. It's place has been taken by a new phantom, one which is potentially far more terrible than the old Marxian spectre. All over Europe, from Sweden, through the Netherlands and Belgium, into France and around the old Eastern bloc, the extreme right wing is making a resurgence. For over sixty years it had lain dormant and we could all think it had been banished from Europe's streets by the Soviets in the inferno and ruins of Berlin, but, no, it has risen anew.

Even in a country as seemingly tolerant as Britain the tendrils of extremism have spread into the farthest corners. A report, due out tomorrow, shows that almost half of all Britons 'would support an anti-immigration English nationalist party if it was not associated with violence and fascist imagery[.]' The report contains a few more surprises, most significant of which is that anti-immigrant sentiments are not merely harboured by white Britons but by other ethnic groups as well:

'According to the survey, 39% of Asian Britons, 34% of white Britons and 21% of black Britons wanted all immigration into the UK to be stopped permanently, or at least until the economy improved. And 43% of Asian Britons, 63% of white Britons and 17% of black Britons agreed with the statement that "immigration into Britain has been a bad thing for the country". Just over half of respondents – 52% – agreed with the proposition that "Muslims create problems in the UK".'

 The report hints at the origins of these fearful attitudes: 'This is not because British people are more moderate, but simply because their views have not found a political articulation.'

Is Britain, so long sheltered from the worst outporings of hatred seen on the Continent, on the brink of falling prey to elected racists sitting among our representatives in Westminster? Jon Cruddas, the Labour MP who saw off the threat of the BNP taking his seat in last year's election, thinks so. He points to a 'very real threat of a new potent political constituency built around an assertive English nationalism.' Fortunately for those of us who stand with Mr. Cruddas on the bulwarks of tolerance and anti-racism, the British electoral system of first-past-the-post will prevent parties like the BNP or a Geert Wilders-like figure winning more than a handful of seats in the House of Commons. But if the voting system is changed to the alternative vote, what then?

Human Rights Safe Without Acts or Treaties

Labour's Shadow Justice Secretary Sadiq Khan wrote an opinion piece in yesterday's Evening Standard in which he reveals a curious understanding about the state of human rights in Britain today. It seems that Mr. Khan believes that human rights, which are in essence normative constructs and examples of current thinking of what it means to be human, will cease to exist in Britain should the Human Rights Act be repealed or should Britain leave the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR). Of course, he knows full well, for he is clearly an intelligent person, that in modern-day Britain human rights are as much protected by the deeply-held convictions of the British people and their elected representatives in Parliament as by acts of Parliament and international treaties.

What's more, Mr. Khan seems to contradict himself in his thoughts on the continued adherence by Britain to the ECHR. First he writes that Britain "As signatories to the ECHR, we cannot just walk away from it. But we can appeal against court rulings and propose reforms to its remit and operation." The latter part is ostensibly the case, except that to reform it would require the unanimous consent of all parties to the treaty, something Mr. Khan knows to be practicably impossible. And there is no appeal possible against the judgments of the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg. But where he contradicts himself is in the first clause of the above quote; he later writes, you see, "The [Human Rights] Act was designed deliberately to preserve the long-held doctrine of parliamentary sovereignty: Parliament alone can decide whether to repeal or amend legislation." If Parliament is sovereign, an opinion I share with Mr. Khan, then Parliament can most certainly decide to walk away from an international treaty. There is no force in the world that has legal right to prevent the actions of a sovereign body.

In fact, human rights would most likely be more strongly protected if they were repatriated. The ECHR and the Strasbourg Court have left the British public with the wretched feeling that human rights are not a product of the shared understanding by a society of what is right and what is wrong, but merely that of 47 men and women ensconced on a bench near the banks of the Rhine. To withdraw from the ECHR and abolishing the Human Rights Act that depends on it would not be the disaster Mr. Khan would like us to believe it would be, but rather gives the British people the chance to re-engage with human rights and to determine anew what they believe human rights to be. The ECHR is almost 60 years old and human rights, far from being eternal, are subject to change and so every once in a while a society needs to reflect on what those rights are.

Mr. Khan's insistence on the dire necessity of an international human rights treaty betrays a lack of faith in the goodness of the British people, who if given the choice, will not seek a return to stoning or witchburning, but will rather uphold those rights they believe every breathing human being possesses by virtue of his existence. They do not need an international treaty telling them what their rights are, they know that full well themselves. International treaties defending human rights are most necessary for people subject to tyranny and oppression - even though they are hardly effective in these cases - but a mature society like Britain has no need for them. On the long journey of human rights, Britain is in the vanguard and we should not let decades-old treaties hold back.

Democratic Revolts and Foreign Policy

David Cameron is in Kuwait today as part of his grand Middle East tour which also saw him visit post-Mubarak Egypt - the first foreign leader to do so. While some commentators have tried to make an issue of the arms-dealing business men accompanying the Prime Minister, the nature of this long-since scheduled trade mission has been irrevokably altered by the winds of popular change sweeping the Arab World. First the people of Tunisia, then those of Egypt set each a momentous - and not to mention largely bloodless - step on the pitfall-strewn road to democracy, and now the streets of Bahrain and Libya are a-thunder with the roar of protest and the clattering hail of bullets and screams of missiles. May they soon throw of the yoke and chains of tyranny!

Mr. Cameron, aware of floods of revolution sweeping the region, has signalled his support for the people yearning for their long-denied liberty: "We stand with the people and governments who are on the side of justice, the rule of law and freedom." Apart from such a standard, boiler-plate remark he also said something far, far more remarkable. Quote the Guardian:

But he indicated that the demonstrations presented a challenge for Britain as he dismissed as a "false choice" the old calculation that authoritarian regimes needed to be supported as the price of ensuring stability.
"For decades, some have argued that stability required controlling regimes and that reform and openness would put that stability at risk," Cameron said.
"So, the argument went, countries like Britain faced a choice between our interests and our values. And to be honest, we should acknowledge that sometimes we have made such calculations in the past."
He added: "But I say that is a false choice. As recent events have confirmed, denying people their basic rights does not preserve stability – rather, the reverse."
The prime minister said Britain and other western countries cannot impose any democratic model on the Arab world, but stressed: "That's not an excuse, as some would argue, to claim that Arabs or Muslims can't do democracy – the so-called Arab exception.
"For me, that's a prejudice that borders on racism. It's offensive and wrong and it's simply not true."

Why, you may ask, is this so remarkable? Not because he acknowledges that Arab or Muslim societies are indeed capable of sustaining democracy - that is a basic ability of any man, one of whose basic hopes is to live life as he, or she, wishes. No, it is so because of the implication for Britain's foreign policy. Mr. Cameron - if he is true to his word, and we have no reason to doubt him - will now have to base his policies on withdrawing support from such 'controlling' regimes While he does stress that Britain will not interfere and impose democracy as Tony Blair did in supporting the invasion of Iraq, his statements can be taken to imply support for any democratic movement in the Middle East - which is a form of interference in itself.

The Prime Minister, then, finds himself in the classical dillema of foreign policy: who to support and when? A basic tenet of foreign policy used to be that a state deals with government in power in another state, or at least refrains from dealing with any rebel movements. This is of course and out-dated outlook, a relic of the pre- Second World War, Peace of Westphalia years. But a catious - and in my view wise - foreign policy is based on non-interference. We deal with the government of the day, but do not support it, nor anyone else in any state, whether they struggle for liberty or oppression. Our values mean we do not prop up dictators in other states, but at the same time should mean we do not overthrow them. Let the people - in this case in the Middle East - do that, let them be the sole instrument of revolution. We will extend the hand of friendship in freedom when they succeed, but sadly cannot do that any earlier. They must determine their own fate, as we in the West have done.

Non-interference will appear to put the interest in stability over the value of freedom in the short-term, but in the long term it will show that only democracy organically grown will flourish. Artificial democracy, like the West's attempts at de-colonization and regime change, will wither as it has no fruited soil to take root in. Mr. Cameron seems to have understood that non-interference does not mean supporting dictators, but rather not supporting anyone, except with cautious and carefully-chosen words, either of warning or welcome.

Honour Bound To Resign?

Nothing has gotten me so riled up ever since starting this blog than the government's proposal to sell large swathes of English woodland to the highest bidder, even though it had already become clear that the funds the scheme would produce would not so much as approach the nearest reaches of the amount desired by the cutting-happy lords of the Treasury. So you can imagine my relief when news came last week that the entire plan was to be abandoned as the Prime Minister rose in the Commons to announce the salvation of those verdant cathedrals and those hidden, leafy mazes and those long-winding paths of gold and blue and green. No trees will now be cut to slighter size, but there is one who has now felt the axeman's sharp edge.

Caroline Spelman, the Environment Secretary, has been thrown quite publicly, as the Americans put it, under the bus by her own political master. One Labour MP described Ms. Spelman's renunciation of the sell-off as a '"humiliating climb down," adding: "The Right Honourable Lady has been made to stand in the coroner [sic] with the dunce’s cap." Another Labour backbencher could but barely contain his obvious amusement at her fate: 'If there is any personal sympathy for the minister today, it's because she has been publicly humiliated by the Prime Minister.'

Indeed I do feel sympathy for Ms. Spelman. No one deserves to be treated in such a disrespectful - and frankly dishonourable - manner by the Prime Minister in whose Cabinet she serves. But it seems that she must - at the very least in part - share the blame for the debacle it so rightly turned into. The Department for Environment Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA) was the first to settle its budget with the Treasury back in the autumn, but it now appears the settement can be re-opened by the Treasury should the holders of the pursestrings feel it is necessary. So not only was Ms. Spelman called to defend a policy that was so unpopular that David Cameron let her hold high the banner for it, only to cut her down when push came to shove, her reward for doing it, the promise she could limit the cuts her department had to make, was wholly hollow and made too rashly months ago.

If Ms. Spelman had any sense of personal honour, she should resign as Environment Secretary. Having been sacrificed on the bloody altar of popular opinion, the trustworthiness of her words has withered to nothing. Whenever she now speaks out on anything, all we will hear is Mr. Cameron whispering to her the exact words she is to say. No politican, whose bond with her electors is based solely on trust, can be seen as a mere cypher for her master. Honour is in turn the basis for that trust and now she has lost her's, Ms. Spelman should give serious consideration to resigning her post. Such a dramatic act would show to the voter that she stands for something. If she then goes on to support the Government vigorously from the backbenches her voice will be that much greater when she inevitably returns to the Cabinet again in the future.

More on the Forest Sale

In only the second post I wrote on this blog back in October I commented on the British Government's proposal to sell large tracts of English woodland to the highest bidder. I saw little redeeming features in the entire scheme, as the sole objective I could identify was the need to raise money to cut down the ever-increasing deficit. But making money is never an objective worth pursuing in itself. Without any goal except the need to sell and sell what Harold Macmillan - that great hero of the small-c conservative - the 'family silver', the entire plan is daft. When Mr. Macmillan criticised Margaret Thatcher for her obsession with privatisation he was thinking of the railways and the utility companies. Just imagine what he would have made of this selling of the nation's natural heritage. To give the full quote:

"The sale of assets is common with individuals and states when they run into financial difficulties. First, all the Georgian silver goes, and then all that nice furniture that used to be in the salon. Then the Canalettos go."

And the Canalettos are going indeed. The first Eton-educated Prime Minister since 'Supermac' is behaving in the most unconservative fashion.

Having said all this, I read in the Guardian this morning that the scheme gets worse and worse by strides. Previously I assumed that the objective of the sell-off was to raise money. Not so it seems. This government is turning out to be so incompetent that even simple value-based arithmatic is beyond them. A government report "shows that government can expect the disposal of the land to cost £679m over 20 years but the benefits will only be £655m."

Selling off the woodlands of Britain had no practical benificial purpose but money and now even that is no longer a valid argument. No one stands to gain from this sale, not the public, who will inevitably lose some of the rights they enjoy now to marvel at the indescribable wonders and pleasures of nature, not the government, who will lose acreage and money to boot, and not the companies and charities who are to buy the land, as the report shows that private ownership and usage is economically unviable. Still the government is pressing forward on the matter.

Perhaps, then, I was too hasty before. It is not the (if only remotely) understandable motive of monetary gain that is driving the sale, but the ideologically blinkered concept that privitisation is always good and public ownership is always bad. I'll leave it to you, reader, to decide whether this is true, but I hope you can infer my opinion on the matter from my two posts on the great forest sale.

Lords Show Why We Need Them

The House of Lords have long been dismissed as an anachronism in this modern age. Appointed, not elected, its members were seen as unaccountable to the omnipotence of the British voters and, therefore, it was argued, the entire House should either be abolished, or simply elected. The last Labour government tried mightily to bring about this ransacking of the ancient constitutional arrangement of the people's House of Commons and the Peer's House of Lords. Unwilling to countenance that anything was beyond his election-and-power-winning spin machine, Tony Blair set his sights on Lords' reform and managed to expell nearly all hereditary Peers, in favour of appointed members. Now the merits of Lords' reform - whether it has gone far enough, or too far already - is a worthy topic in itself, but it's not the topic of this post.

No, the reason for this post are the issues at stake in the debate now raging in the Lords about the proposed referendum on voting reform. Most conservatives hoped that David Cameron's ascend to the doorstep of 10 Downing Street would be the end of ill-considered constitutional meddling. After all, the Conservative Party is usually most hesitant to carry through reforms of the ancient constitution. But us small-c conservatives hadn't counted on the Lib-Dems joining the government and being thrown the bone of a referendum on introducing the AV voting system. Mr. Cameron then compounded the matter by tacking onto the referendum bill is demands for boundary changes and a reduction of the number of Commons seats.

Having introduced this hybrid bill the Government set about whipping its Commons majority into supporting it, which given that both the Tories and the Lib-Dems got something they wanted out of it, shouldn't have been much of a problem. Nevertheless it took the controversial measure of 'guillotine motion' - a procedural order cutting short the time allocated for debate - to get to an aye vote. But unlike the Commons, the Lords have no such procedure and are now showing they do not stand ready to be run over rod-shod. And time is of the essence: if the bill does not get approved before February 16th, there will be no referendum on the desired date of May 5th.

So with the Government wanting the bill to pass, and a sizeable part - if not a majority - of the Lords wanting to at least decouple the referendum part from the boundary and number of seats part, the Upper House is being kept in sessions. They have been at it straight since 3.38 pm yesterday and have so far debated two out of more than a hundred proposed amendments. The Leader of the House of Lords, Lord Strathclyde is already accusing the Labour Lords of using dishonourable delaying tactics:

'The opposition have dragged their feet. They've had their fun." He added: "The situation has become urgent because the Labour Party has decided to go on a marathon go-slow since we started the committee [to consider the bill]."'

But Lord Falconer, the Leader of the Opposition in the Lords has rejected this, saying: "This bill is motivated by party politics... It has been introduced without public consultation or pre-legislative scrutiny." And he is completely right in saying so.

Linking up two unrelated matters in a single bill is base trickery intended to making it impossible for people to oppose it, since rejecting one part you don't want means also rejecting something you have previously stated publicly you do support, leaving you open to charges of flip-flopping. Seeing as I don't support either part of this bill I have no qualms whatsoever is saying I support Labour Lords in their efforts to at least decouple the bill.

As the Upper House the House of Lords is there precisely to give proper consideration to bills that have been rushed through the Commons. It is a House of reflection not of politicking and I believe that it's current make-up - that of unelected, and therefore independent members - is very-well suited to this role. To open the Lords to election would be to lose this vital instrument of careful consideration. The Lords would be whipped into line for fear of losing their seat at the next election and would thus go along with whatever the government wanted. As it stands now if the government introduces a mistake-riddled bill, it might be spotted before it comes law and not afterwards, when all the wrong it causes has already been unleashed on the public.

So hurrah for the Lords! Hurrah for standing up for wisdom and scrutiny! May they keep at it for as long as it takes!

Playing the Name Game

In the eyes of some it may be a miracle but every once in a while Benedict XVI says something eminently sensible. In a mass in the Sistine Chapel yesterday the Roman Pontiff called for parents to end the craze of giving their children 'fashionable' names like Lily and Ashton, and to return to traditional Christian names. The Pope, being a religiously-minded octogenarian, naturally couched his call in religious terms:

'"Every baptised child acquires the character of the son of God, beginning with their Christian name, an unmistakable sign that the Holy Spirit causes man to be born anew in the womb of the Church." He added that a name was an "indelible seal" that set children off on a lifelong "journey of religious faith"'

And while we may disagree with the religious rethoric, I'm sure we can all admit that naming your son Venerdi (Friday), as one couple in Italy did, is irresponsible. Little 'Friday' will, later in life, find himself the butt of jokes and the target of snide comments, and perhaps even find it hard to secure a good job as employers will likely wish to hire someone with a respectable, 'normal' name. He will carry the stigma of his parents' desire to be unique for the rest of his natural life. A British Catholic Church official hit the nail square on the head when he said: '"Naming children after perfumes, bicycles and countries is putting a limit on their potential. They are not merchandise or commodities.'


This trend of 'unique' names is most popular with celebrities, both in Britain and abroad:

'Sir Bob Geldof has daughters named Pixie and Peaches, while Victoria and David Beckham called their first son Brooklyn, after the district of New York. Katie Price, the glamour model, named her daughter Princess Tiaamii. ...  Francesco Totti, the footballer, recently decided to call his daughter Chanel, while Flavio Briatore, the Formula One boss, named his newborn son Falso Nathan.' 

These children will not face the risk of hearing 'sorry, we've hired someone else instead' from employers - their parents are wealthy enough for that. Yet they are, or will be, most certainly the victim of behind-their-back sniggers at their ridiculous names.

With regards to these celebrities the Pope has a point. However, his call, while admirable, is perhaps still a bit premature. As it happens, today saw the release (Dutch language alert) of the latest statistics on the most popular given names in the Netherlands. And as it transpires, the top 20 for both boys and girls consists almost exclusively of good, old-fashioned names like Lucas, Tim and Thomas, and Sophie, Julia and Emma. In fact out of the top 20 girls' names, only Noa and Lynn strike me as odd - of course spelling wise there could be improvement. With the boys' names the field is a bit more muddled with Sem - not Sam - being the most popular name and Milan, Jayden and Finn making the cut as well. Still, as far as the top 20 goes, not bad from a traditional point of view.

I also looked up the statistics for the UK and found that the top 10 for both genders consist mostly of names I would consider for my own children. What did strike me was the tendency of British parents to christen their children shortened versions of names, like Charlie and Evie and Jack. Why not give them the full version and use the shortened one in every day life, for example Prince Henry of Wales, better known of course as Prince Harry? The Office for National Statistics indicates that this is indeed a recent trend and that this shortening of names was 'rarely permitted' in the past.

Looking at the Netherlands and Britain, then, the Pope's call is slightly premature. But still, given that this silly-names bussiness is popular amongst celebrities and people do tend to follow celebrity trends, it is a good thing he warned us. I don't say this very often, but well done you, Pope Benedict XVI.

God Forfend: Is Ed Milliband Starting To Grow On Me?

When the Labour party last September elected, rather surprisingly, Ed Milliband as leader over his older brother David, I thought that would close the door on my returning to the left wing fold in the foreseeable future. While both brothers were the supreme epitomes of the techocratic MP, David appeared to have far more political acumen as well as sounder policy ideas. Ed, on the other hand, gave off the impression of being a highly opportunistic fellow, willing to discard his old ties to Gordon Brown, the unions and the left wing, socialist divisions of the Labour party in order to gain the leadership. And that's not to mention the commiting of that most dishonourable of sins, fratricide. So young Mr. Milliband, with his deer-in-the-headlight eyes and lack of any centrist charisma, in my view would not amount to much.

All this was confirmed during his first months in the position as his first press conferences and sparrings with David Cameron across the dispatch box during Prime Minister's Questions revealed a man grossly out of his depth. He did not have a firm grasp of his policies and figures and stumbled when pressed on even the most basic of policies, until he was so hard pressed that he announced a general policy review in lieu of having to come with up anything himself. In all not a very auspicious start for a new, relatively untried leader of the opposition. Then came the questions about his private life - as an unmarried co-habitating father he had neglected to sign his name on his first child's birth certificate - and his party's inivisible presence during the university top-up-fees debates. Oh woe was Ed Milliband, who by now seemed certain to be a short-lived Labour leader.

The arrival of the New Year, however, has been kind to Mr. Milliband. The rise of VAT has for the first time signalled to the general public that the Coalition Government's policies will hurt them in their wallets and pockets, at least in the short term. For some reason - maybe his Christmas dinner brought him good fortune or he made some propitous New Year's Resolution - his first press conference (See here for a, perhaps a little overly sympathetic, live blog) of 2011 showed him in a different, far more agreeable and capable light than his first. More relaxed and in control, Mr. Milliband the Younger showed he might yet have a future as Prime Minister. That these thoughts have entered into my usually conservative mind may be because they are being roped in by my growing dislike of David Cameron, who after a strong start in Number 10 is starting to appear as a somewhat pantomime politician, incapable of making promises he can keep.

Even some of his policy suggestions are starting to make sense. To even impugn that I might find Labour ideas sensible in any way, shape or form would have been repugnant and hideous to me but a few short months ago. I especially appreciated his calling for Royal Bank of Scotland's chief executive - a state-owned bank - not to receive a multi-million pound bonus and that the unions should not strike in a coordinated fashion to bring down the government. That, Mr. Milliband the Younger says, is the job of the opposition in Parliament, not the opposition on the street. Very well, it is not yet anything I'd vote for, but if he keeps on going, Mr. Milliband the Younger will at least make me think of Labour as a party I could see running the country.

And the most important impression I came away with today is that Ed Milliband seems to believe in what he says, something that I can never recognize in Mr. Cameron these days. As we learn from Cicero, only a politician who's is convinced of the truth of his own ideas can hope to convince the voters. That is what Mr. Milliband the Younger needs to do and that is, indeed, what he seems to be doing.

Be Wary of the Chinese Dragon

Last Thursday, the Chinese ambassador in London, Mr. Liu Xiaoming wrote an article in the Telegraph describing what he sees as a warming of ties between Britain and China. The ambassador's article comes on the eve of the visit of China's Vice Premier Li Keqiang to the UK next week. This visit, Mr Xiaoming writes, 'will bring another Chinese warm breeze to the UK.' Economic co-operation between Britain and China has been growing steadily over recent decades and, according the Mr. Xiaoming at least, the two countries share a plethora of common ideals:

'We both call on the international community to step up macroeconomic policy co-ordination and reform international economic and financial governance structures; we both uphold free trade, oppose trade protectionism and work for an early conclusion of the Doha round negotiations; we have had close dialogue and co-ordination in relation to the Iranian nuclear situation and other hotspots. China and the UK need to work together to address global issues.'

However, in light of last week's events in France, the UK and its political and commercial leaders should be aware that with China things are not always what they seem. Three senior employees of French carmaker Renault have been suspended pending an investigation into suspected industrial espionage. Now it seems that the French government is looking into possible Chinese involvement in the matter.

'A member of the DCRI [Direction Centrale du Renseignement Intérieur, the French intelligence services] told Le Point that French companies had underestimated the potential damage of industrial spying: "French companies don't have a sense of economic intelligence," he said.
He added: "This is a classic case of spying. The Chinese are masters of this and they've gone on the offensive."'

Any country that is on the charming end of a Chinese trade mission should do well to remember this: China gives with one hand and takes with the other, although the latter might be hidden from sight.

That China not always plays by the rules the West expects it to adhere to should not come as a surprise. George Grant wrote a column in the Telegraph detailing the Middle Kingdom's many rather insidious dealings 'round the world, including arms trading with countries like Zimbabwe and Sudan, not places particularly famous for their peaceful and human-rights-upholding practices. But if China's involvement in the Renault espionage case can be proven it would be a new low for China. Never before has there been any concrete evidence that it is engaging in what is usually considered unfriendly behaviour in the relations between states and a reason for the swift suspension of diplomatic intercourse.

China is still - or should that be already - too powerful for any Western country to take such steps but this espionage matter would certainly open the eyes of many government officials in the West to the true nature of the Dragon. And it should lead us to be wary of China and to not only see the piles of money but to remember the old Shakespearian (from the Merchant of Venice) line: 'all that glisters is not gold.'

Government Wants to Change Your Mind

I'm not usually one for conspiracy theories. For instance, I do not believe Prince Philip and his friends the lizard people ordered MI5 to assassinate Lady Diana; Nor do I believe that the world is ruled from a hotel called Bilderberg near Arnhem; Nor that the vaults of Area 51 are filled with UFOs that somehow keep hitting the earth without anyone noticing. So as a sceptically inclined person I scoffed at the suggestions made by Brendan O'Neill in a blog post he wrote for the Telegraph. In the post he argued that a Whitehall taskforce is trying to influence the way people behave by 'nudging' them into certain modes of behaviour. He gives three examples:

'for example, by offering less well-off shoppers health vouchers to encourage them to buy Hellman’s Light Mayonnaise rather than a King Sized Mars Bar; or by changing our local community infrastructure to make it harder to drive a car and easier to ride a bike; or by having cashpoint machines ask us: “Would you like to make a donation to a charity?”'

 O'Neill continues by invoking the terrible, nightmarish government practices of Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four and saying that 'the whole nudge thing is spectacularly Orwellian'.

But while I dismissed at first the entire idea as a rather simple project of subisdies by a coalition government inept at marketing its proposals properly, it was O'Neill's last paragraph that got me thinking:

'A Cabinet Office document says that because the masses make decisions “outside of conscious awareness” (ie. we’re a bit thick), the government should aim to become our “surrogate willpower”, making decisions on our behalf. In short, the authorities should colonise our minds and do our thinking for us. It is pure Big Brother. The state-approved lifestyle is no life at all.'

You see, I rather like the ability to think for myself and resent anyone, whether he be prime minister or professor or bin man, to assume that he can do manipulate the cogs and wheels inside my head. But then, as those same cogs and wheels started doing their thing, I remembered that the Lib-Dems are part of this government. And the Lib-Dems, as we all know, have no clue what to do if someone actually gives them power to do anything. So I'm not too worried about Big Brothers Cameron and Clegg puppet-mastering my every move.

What's more, governments have been doing this for ages. The last Labour government was especially prone to just throw money at a problem hoping that the mere sight of the Queen's head on a piece of paper would change peoples' minds. And if Tony Blair and Peter Mandelson didn't manage to take away our free will then I doubt this government will pull it off. What I think worries O'Neill most of all is that he assumed that a Tory government would be above such practices. But a government is inclined to try to use its power to control anything and everything. Maybe we should attempt to collectively counter-'nudge' Cameron and Clegg to stop bothering us with this transparent trickery and get on with doing something useful for a change.

Belgium: 207 Days and Still No Future In Sight

Belgium is a country that has little to live for. Jeremy Clarkson - in one of his rare existentialist moments - called Belgium "a country invented so that Britain and Germany would have somewhere to sort out their differences." And it is true that without the interference of the Great Powers in 1830, Belgium would not have existed, but would have been split between the Netherlands and France. Now the Belgiums are coming to realize that they could have saved themselves the trouble of 180 years of national bi-linguistic co-existence. After 207 days (Dutch language alert) of coalition negotiations (Britons, take note: coalitions can take this long to form. Your five day wait was easy) everybody is ready to throw in the towel. The issues dividing the Dutch-speaking Flemish and French-speaking Walloons are too much to overcome.

The Dutch Volkskrant newspaper concludes (Dutch language alert) that Belgium now has but two options left: the first is an emergency government and the second is another general election. Neither will provide a real, lasting solution. An emergency government will eventually have to be replaced by a government with a democratic mandate and elections are unlikely to shift the political landscape so dramatically as to open up new avenues of negotiation opportunities. So what is Belgium to do? Nobody seems to know anymore.

There is, however, a third option that few appear willing to countenance: a break-up of the country into two independent states: Flanders and Wallonia. Now as most of my British friends will know, I'm not the biggest fan of Belgium. Still, I would be sorry to see it dissappear from the map. And to be honest it is unlikely to go anytime soon. The stakes are too high for everybody involved: the Walloons know that without the financial backing of Flanders, Wallonia is a dirt-poor country, with no high-tech industry to speak of. The Flemish are aware that they are to small a country to go it alone and cognizant that their only hope is to rejoin the Netherlands, which would be a national humiliation.

Finally there is the European Union. Belgium, as a bi-lingual country, is in fact a wee version of the state of EU wants to be. So letting Belgium fall apart would be to admit that linguistic differences are impossible to reconcile and, ergo, that the EU is doomed to failure. Yugoslavia, a similarly divided country was allowed to dissolve itself in the early 1990s because it was on the fringes of Europe. But for Belgium, right in Europe's heartland, to break up would be of a different magnitude, even if it will be a peaceful separation. The EU will therefore do everything in its power to prop up Belgium. Whatever it takes Belgium must be maintained.

And long may it live, for it will give the rest of us something to make fun of, this oversized border between the Netherlands and France.

On a side note, that Belgium has been without a government gives us another thing to ponder. Does a country need a government to function? Apparantly not. It can exist perfectly well with just a Parliament and some bureaucratically-minded civil servants. Who would have thunk it?

On the Joys of Travel Disruption

In the run-up to Christmas last December an amount of snow that would hardly have perturbed the average Moscovite, Swede or Canadian crippled the national infrastructure of Britain and the Netherlands, along with most other countries in Western Europe. Planes no longer took off from ice-covered airports, cars and trucks got stranded in snow drift-blocked motorways, and passengers were stuck in freezing trains and stations as the tracks were unusable. This post will not add to the chorus-voice of anger and shock at the inability of any company or government in any country impacted to help with the situation. Sometimes no agency 'neath heaven can do anything about the vagaries of weather.

Rather, it is about something that made me feel better about my fellow man. I myself had foolishly decided to undertake some travelling during the 'snow-storms'. First a flight home from London to the Netherlands, then a trip by train to my little brother in Maastricht, and finally a number of journeys around the country to visit more family and friends. Admittedly, I could have done without all the disruptions: a flight cancellations, long delays and detours on the trains, yet as I was stuck in airports and trainstations I observed a genial dichotomy in the behaviour of people. On the one hand there was understandable anger and annoyance at the delays, but at the same time people seemed kinder, more patient, and keener to interact with their fellow travellers.

The anger was also not directed at the sometimes hapless ground staff of the airlines and the station personnel of the railways. People understood that they themselves were almost as ignorant about the situation as the traveller himself. No, people were angry at the larger companies for their inability to inform even their own staff of the situation and the seemingly complete lack of effort to fix anything. I noticed this when, stuck at Eindhoven train station on my way to Maastricht, people joked with staff about the broken signals somewhere down the track. The NS (Dutch National Railways) member of staff showed what information he had on his little handheld device. It told him, he said, that the signal would be repaired when it would be repaired and not any sooner and at some point the NS would decide to schedule replacement bus services, but he did not know when. He said that all he knew was that the bus would come eventually, unless it got stuck in the snow too. Not a good joke, but people smiled all the same, for they realized that the chap knew as little as they did, but at least understood their predicament and sympathized.

Then, when the busses eventually came, we all got on and began to share our stories of being stuck at some small one-tracked village station waiting for a train to emerge out of the blinding-white curtain of snow; or like me, scrambling at some airport to book the last seat on the last flight to take off before ice overwhelmed the tarmack. Instead of coccooning ourselves in our little worlds of I-phone games and head-phone music, we listended and nodded and laughed with each other. For a little while we understood, to paraphrase John Donne, that we were not islands, entire of ourselves, but part of something larger.

And when the busses finally brought us to the next station where we all took trains to our separate destinations we said quick goodbyes, wished each other happy holidays, and - as I assume most people will have done - totally forgot about this brief shared experience. Still, it all made the long waits at stations and airports a little more bareable, and maybe if the harsh winters keep coming something about the joys of talking to each other, even people you don't know, may stick and teach us all a lesson about social behaviour. Or not. The dreamer that I am can hope, of course, but the cynic in me is not holding his breath. But at least I got free coffee from the NS for waiting patiently, so I'll always have that memory to look back on.