What Do We Do With the Irish Problem?
At times, I think the euro is a good idea. But to be fair, it will only work, if everybody acts as a team and plays the same way and to the same objectives. But Greece and now Ireland have taken advantage of the rules to play the game their way. Robert Peston wrote a very good piece on his blog yesterday and got right to the point.
Ireland has got itself in this mess by pursuing an unsubstanable property bubble and then bailing out the banks and the builders with loans from the European Central Bank.
But what started it?
For more years than I can remember, Irish thoroughbred breeders got it easy in the region of taxes. There were so many crazy rules, such as stallion fees being except of tax and that is why all the best stallions outside Middle Eastern ownership are in Ireland. And when it came to sell yearings and fials, did English breeders get the price their horse deserved? Sometimes but not always! In fact because of the racehorse tax situation, Tattersalls, the auctioneers, thought about moving to Ireland.
In fact you might argue, that the parlous state of racing and breeding in the UK, France, Germany and Italy, is down to the Irish and their feather-bedded industry!
But it’s not just horse owners and breeders, that get this treatment.
Irish corporate taxes are out of line with the rest of Europe and consequently, many companies use Ireland as a legal way of minimising taxes.
This is wrong and European finances will not return to sanity until we all play by similar rules in the areas of budget deficits, corporate taxes, working practices andpensions.
But it will not be easy, as look at the problems, France has been having trying to put a modicum of sense into its pensions.
So to repeat Gladstone’s famous question. which of course was part of “If you solve the Irish question, the Irish change the question!”
So Ireland, you must change the question! Ireland has one of the most educated populations in the EU. perhaps their insistence on not needing the bailout is a good policy and the start of this process.
But remember too, we have extensive investments in the country and they have a lot in the UK, so perhaps if we worked together more in all sorts of areas, we might both do each other some good, despite past troubles.
James Blunt and His Part in Stopping World War 3
The story isn’t quite as dramatic as that, but it shows the different in attitude between US and UK forces, when it comes to dealing with a little local difficulty over Pristina airfield in Kosovo with the Russians.
In the end the view of General Mike Jackson prevailed over that of his commander, the US general, Wesley Clark. So Blunt and his troops, encircled the Russians and when the Russians food and water ran out, the Russians felt it prudent to co-operate and share the airfield.
But even so, Blunt admitted that he wouldn’t have fought the Russians, as he didn’t want to be the man who started World War 3, even if he had been court-martialed later.
Designer Spirits from Suffolk
I suppose if you’re going to launch a new product in the midst of a recession, gin, vodka and whiskey might be a place to start.
But these are not cheap products, but top of the range ones from Adnams.
When I started drinking in the 1960s. the brewery from Southwold had only a dozen or so pubs. Now over forty years later, Adnams has cemented its place in drinking fokelore as probably the best pint in the civilised world. I just hope that in the next few years, they try to create the first gluten-free real ale. If anybody could do it, then they probably can, as they are a company that when it has an idea, does it in style with the best technology available.
Are We Winning the Spam Wars?
If you believe this article in The Register, the answer may be yes. Here’s an extract.
Spam volumes almost halved in the three months between August and the end of October, according to Symantec.
Symantec’s hosted services unit (formerly MessageLabs) credits a 47 per cent sharp decrease in global spam volumes to action by the authorities against botnets and organised cybercrooks. In October, authorities in the Netherlands took down several servers associated with the Bredolab botnet. The action followed the September closure of spamit.com, a key player in the unlicensed pharmaceuticals spam racket, and arrests in the US, UK and Ukraine of scores of suspected members of a ZeuS phishing Trojan ring.
If more of us installed proper protection against spam, we might continue to see a decline.
Let’s hope so! If you don’t want to spend money on spm protection, you could always use Clamwin, as I do.
It Pays to Think When You Tweet
There is a story about how a Tory councillor, suggested something not very nice should happen to a journalist.
I’m afraid that you generally don’t make jokes about capital punshment, unless they are positive. For instance, if say someone was exonerated by further evidence like DNA and released, then to make jokes about the legal system is probably OK.
If the councillor had thought, he could have said something quite funny or constructive, that wasn’t offensive. He could have said that he disagreed with Ms. Brown and wasn’t it Tony Blair who took us into Iraq!
C was a barrister and she said that the most telling statement in Court was often nothing with an appropriate look!
The trouble with Twitter is it’s very much in the shoot first, ask questions afterwards camp.
We’ve already got the Cairns case, where Chris Cairns is suing Lalit Modi for libel in the English Courts.
There will be many more.
Zoe Renault
Another legal spat reported in the Telegraph.
Interestingly in France, where I thought they had better things to do.
A Spat Over a Breast Enhancement Cream
There is a legal spat going on between a company called Rodial and a plastic surgeon called Dr. Dalia Nield. You can read about it in this article in The Independent.
It strikes me that this one will run and run, but it could be one that falls into that category, where someone makes a legitimate comment, from professional knowledge and experience, and someone else decides they’ll challenge that statement in the Courts by suing for libel. Read the article in The Independent and you will see that Dr. Nield is supported by Sense About Science, a charity which fights against these actions and in the past supported the author, Simon Singh.
These sort of actions worry me, as I have pretty strong opinions on some controversial subjects and one of these days I might arouse the ire of a rather nasty snake oil salesman. So I will not come down in favour of one party or another.
I do know of Rodial though, but in a strange way. At least twice a week for several months, I have got a sales e-mail from them. When I got the first, I thought it was a spam e-mail, as it was trying to sell me a breast enhancement cream or other such product, that I have no need for. Mainly because I’m a man, but also because I don’t use any creams or potions at all. I should also say, that, I’ve seen lots of this type of e-mail from spammers in the United States and as this email seemed little different, I immediately regarded it as being of the same type, even though it enlarged breasts rather than the male organ. I didn’t even bother to try to unsubscribe, as it came from a retired e-mail address, I don’t use very often. So that means they must have obtained an old list from somewhere. I wonder what the Information Commisioner would say about that. I’m not bothered, as I just set the spam filter to drop them straight into the Spam Folder, as I do for most of the spam I get, as often unsubscribing tells the spammer that the e-mail address is real.
The Universal Credit
I can’t help feeling that this is the way to go on benefits, but it won’t be an easy change.
But I think if anybody can drive it through then Ian Duncan-Smith can, as he seems to have researched the subject thoroughly.
I know my late wife, C, would be applauding the changes. In so many of her divorce cases, the client was often in despair about dealing with the various agencies. She said they all complained, that if they worked too many hours or earned just a little too much, they saw none of it, as the benfits just reduced in line. In the changes, it has been said this morning, that for every pound extra claimants earn, then they will be able to keep thirty five pence. It may not seem much, but it’s more than nothing.
There will be fights over this benefit and those outside the process will try to create havoc, just as some students did yesterday on the protests in Westminster.
Pink Elephants
There is an old joke about four men sitting in a compartment of a train. You can tell how old it is, as when did we last have compartments in a train? Three are just sitting there watching in astonishment as every time the forth man finishes a page of the Daily Telegraph, he shreds it to pieces , opens the window and throws the paper out with a determined throw.
Intrigued one of the others, asks what he is doing?
‘It’s to keep the pink elephants away!’ the paper-shredder replies.
‘But there aren’t any pink elephants!’ was the reply he got from the other three.
‘Effective! Isn’t it?’
It would appear that Dubya’s defence of waterboarding is very much on the same lines. He justifies it because there were no attacks after they tortured Sheikh Mohammed, the al-Qaeda mastermind behind the 9/11 attack.
Am I alone in believing that there would have been no 9/11 or at least a much more restricted atrocity, if the United States had employed some basic security at airports in line with what we had in place in the UK and Europe at the time? After all they had had a car bomb atack on the World Trade Centre in 1994 and the bombing in Oklahoma in 1995. So America can’t say it wasn’t warned!
I think Dubya is getting his strike in early with his book, which will go to the bottom of the worst seller lists.
Remember, the Mad Hatters are all for fiscal prudence and which President was not very prudent? Some will say stand up Dubya and be counted!
Power to the People.
David Cameron is proposing putting details of a lot of Government expenditure and plans on the Internet, so that anybody with time on their hands can scrutinise it. It is an idea that I totally approve of. In fact, I think we need a lot more information there, so that people can have statistics to back their theories; conventional or not!
The Anonymous Widower 