The first car race probably happened when the second car was built and the first one had something to race against. It’s just how it is, people will race anything with a motor. Lawnmowers, Bobcats and the usual range of cars.
One the butts of all jokes is the Robin Reliant. For the non-enlightened it’s a three wheel, one wheel drive, fiberglass bodied deathtrap of a machine, and of course they are raced.
The last couple of weeks have been by far the biggest for the coalition government in London. The Libyan uprising has not only been David Cameron’s first big foreign policy test, but his reactions to it have not been great.
The last couple of weeks have found the raised a lot of questions about the coalition. Cameron was on tour with arms manufacturers and the increasingly marginalized Nick Clegg was skiing in Switzerland and had forgotten that he was in the role of acting prime minister. The Foreign Secretary William Hague stalled and repeated unverified rumours about Gaddafi leaving from Libya and mysteriously declining to call a meeting of the service heads. Both huge mistakes, you would have thought that after Iraq and Blair’s actions that senior ministers would be far more careful about passing on unsubstantiated rumour.
This week, the Government will be cross-examined in the Commons on its performance thus far and what went wrong with the extraction of UK nationals from Libya. Labour has settling into opposition rather well and Douglas Alexander is becoming an increasingly impressive Shadow Foreign Secretary, is right to insist that the statement be made to the house by Cameron, rather than William Hague.
It may have been the governments first test, but it’s not big enough to really show any level of incompetence beyond doubt. But there are still very serious questions to be asked, and it’s right that the PM who answers them in the house.
This week, the Government will be cross-examined in the Commons on its performance thus far and what went wrong with the extraction of UK nationals from Libya. Douglas Alexander, the increasingly impressive Shadow Foreign Secretary, is right to insist that the statement be made by the Prime Minister rather than William Hague.
The last seven days have not been good for the Coalition. The PM on tour with arms manufacturers; Nick Clegg forgetting on the slopes of a Swiss ski resort that he was meant to be Acting Prime Minister; Hague stumbling uncharacteristically as precious hours ticked by, reporting flaky rumours about Gaddafi’s supposed flight from Libya and mysteriously declining to call a meeting of Cobra. This was hardly the Coalition’s Hurricane Katrina – a crisis that revealed, definitively and beyond doubt, an administration’s structural incompetence. But there are still very serious questions to be asked, and it should be the PM who addresses them in the Commons.
This was not the administrations “Hurricane Katrina” moment, it is merely embarrassing rather than a real challenge to his credibility. but it is embarrassing for a man trying to find his place on the world stage. It’s not only the British PM that’s in this position. The US government largely stood there immobile. The UN and EU got involved, made noises about statements and resolutions, but ultimately nothing happened.
The British government has it’s own hawks, notably in George Osborne. The chancellor seems to be moving past William Hague as the PM’s true deputy in the government. There have been a number of reports that Osborne and not the foreign secretary is pulling a lot of the strings and is the real interventionist at the sharp end of this government.
In a speech in Kuwaiti last week Cameron said that it’s not for the West to impose their ideals and values on the region, but warned that “we cannot remain silent in our belief that freedom and the rule of law are what best guarantee human progress and economic success”.
In the same Kuwaiti speech Cameron said “political and economic reform in the Arab world is not just good in its own right, but it’s also a key part of the antidote to the extremism that threatens the security of us all”.
This hardly contains the power of the “Blair Doctrine” Chicago speech of 1999, where Blair laid out his thoughts on pre-emptive intervention under certain circumstances (see this post), but it is a step to defining what his government believes in and the countries place on the world stage. It is true that the current government sees the world (and the UK’s role in it) very differently to that on Labour a decade ago, but there are times when Cameron feels a little uncomfortable about the global legacy he inherited from Blair.
There has been a lot of talk about the shootings in Tucson last weekend. It’s not the first time the world has been affected by senseless acts like this, and it certainly won’t be the last.
There has been a lot of blame thrown around, the left blames the inflamed partisan rhetoric of the far right, the right says the left is wrong for making it a political issue and we all go on. Both sides of the debate are predictably looking for something they can win the debate with.
In reality did Sarah Palin putting crosshairs (don’t insult my intelligence by saying they could be surveyor marks, we know what they were) on a map cause this? No, of course not. In the wider picture did the ugly political atmosphere that the extremists on either side of the spectrum are creating with their sound bites and negative campaigning cause six people to die in Tucson? Same answer no, but it sure does not help anyone.
There is no easy cause-effect relationship here no matter how hard the talking heads on the left and the right try to convince us there are.
Do these things help, hell no! But crazy has a way of finding something to latch on to and make it’s own. It always has, and it’s only after the event that the media throws their arms up and the politicians move in to score points.
Dressing in a trench coat did not cause Columbine, just dressing up in camouflage had nothing to do with the Hungerford massacre in the UK. In no way is Catcher in the Rye responsible for John Lennon’s death, but that has never stoped people making the cause-effect link when it suits their point of view.
In each of these things, and countless thousands of incidents across the world someone unhinged found something to hold onto, something that they took and ran with. These people are sick, are not getting the help they need and unfortunately what they have to say (go look at what Jared Loughner, the Tucson shooter, had to say on YouTube there are links everywhere) is shockingly close to some of that being spewed by the extremists on talk radio (both left and right).
No one can look at Loughner’s YouTube rants and think “There is a balanced individual”, just as I don’t understand how people listen to some of the commentators out there and think the same thing. The crazies sound awfully close to mainstream some times.
I’m not saying Glen Beck is going to gun someone down, I am saying it makes it more difficult to separate the real crazies from those who play them in the media.
There are people in this world who do incredible good, yet the crazies yells far louder.
I’m going to give the last word to the Pima Country Sheriff Clarence Dupnik: “When you look at unbalanced people, how they respond to the vitriol that comes out of certain mouths about tearing down the government. The anger, the hatred, the bigotry that goes on in this country is getting to be outrageous. And unfortunately, Arizona, I think, has become the capital. We have become the mecca for prejudice and bigotry.”
I was listening to a BBC podcast today and they had an excerpt from Thatcher’s 1980 Conference speech, the rather influential “this lady is not for turning” speech.
Here we are thirty years later and last month was David Cameron’s first Tory conference as PM and the most significant theme of his election campaign was carried through to the conference. Big Society and what it means. I’m not a natural Tory and did not vote for them last spring.
It’s difficult to imagine Thatcher using the same words and discussing “new politics” while telling her base that’s she is cutting child benefits for the middle class. The PM said “I know how anxious people are. I wish there was an easier way, but I have to tell you there is no other responsible way.” His first speech as PM was not rewarded with cheers and endless ovations.
I think most people understand what Cameron is talking about in his “big society”, getting rid of the huge central bureaucracy put in place by Labour over the last 13 years and giving power to local authorities and empowering local people to run things as they see fit.
Cameron did not face his critics during his speech, the child benefit cuts are seen as exactly what they are, an attack on the middle classes. The PM and the senior members of the coalition, to a certain extent have to sell the British people the financial pain, hundreds of thousands of public job losses and shrinking public services are going to be worth it. We understand there is little choice, that the road of the last few years is unsustainable and get the doom and gloom both the current and previous governments were very vocal about.
It’s not so much the elimination of child benefit that’s important, it’s that the chancellor announced it at the party conference. He was letting the public know that the conservative base that gave Cameron and the Tories Number 10, will be suffering alongside the rest of us.
The spending review cut some 80 billion pounds of spending, hundreds of thousands of jobs, and at the party conference a few weeks ago the PM and chancellor made it clear everyone is going to take some of the pain. In theory the austerity that is going to go along with the reduction of the bloated, centralized government that emerged during the good times under Blair has been applauded by most. However this was the first contact the Troy faithful have had, and like everyone else, they don’t like it
He said most of the right things, content was fine, but the delivery poor. He lacked the humanity, the down to earthness that he was known for on the opposition benches. Critics have been very vocal about Cameron and Osborne not understanding the British middle class. They come from a place of privilege and don’t get the aspirations people have to move forward.
The main point of Cameron’s speech was his much talked about his vision of “Big Society”.
‘Let’s pull together,’ he said. ‘Let’s work together in the national interest_… The Big Society needs you to give it life… More power to local government and your neighborhood and you… It is a revolution. We are the radicals now.’
All very noble and rather compelling TV in the moment, but I think most people are pretty apathetic about the whole idea. No one has shown how it will help them day-to-day. It’s just politics as usual. Snow, North Korea and England’s performance are far more pressing to most.
There was nothing in the speech to make the electorate sit up and think “he may be onto something here…” The cynical see it as a distraction from the theme of cuts, cuts and more cuts.
You know there is discontent in the party when the leader that gave them government after 13 years in opposition is compared to Thatcher, and the Tory right are not happy. They feel Cameron is making a critical mistake by hitting the people who voted for him. They say (rightly, BTW) Margaret Thatcher would never have done that. Like Blair, she always looked after the people that put her there.
This is a link to a Richard Adams blog in todays Guardian newspaper. In it he runs down the 10 worst adverts during the current election cycle. It is something of a target rich environment, so enjoy.
BTW, my personal favorite, the demonic sheep, I’ve never seen a political add quite that strange. Would have loved to be in the room when someone came up with that idea and sold it to the candidate.
With the questions I have about the man it was inevitable that I was going to get Blair’s memoirs. It does make me feel a little better that my money is going to the British Legion rather than his Tonyness.
Unlike most post career memoirs this one was written by the subject. Blair says that he wrote every word in longhand “on hundreds of notepads” and as the deadline approached he even had his blackberry taken away. I can believe that, he’s an OK writer, but the book would have benefited from fewer clichés and a few more reflective moments.
Unquestionably he is one of the best communicators as a speaker or interviewee. The moments he talked off the cuff and threw away the speeches was when he was at his best, and his best was brilliant (Labour conference in ’95 or ’96 where he talked about his belief and vision for the UK was astounding). In those moments he showed a passion and created a connection that is sorely missing from the book.
One of the most interesting things in the book were his thoughts on Gordon Brown, it’s clear that their relationship in later years was at best, poor. He admits to never really dealing with Brown and his allies when they started to undermine his position; this led to what some commentators called the “Blair-Brown civil war”. Perhaps his most important admission is that he knew Brown would be a disaster a premier (which he was) but did nothing to change the succession agreement between the two rivalries.
He writing does lead to a sort of honesty that’s missing from many of his contemporaries efforts. Unquestionably one of his biggest triumphs was the peace agreement in Northern Ireland. Yet in his discussions of that time he admits to stretching the truth to “breaking point” when trying to put together a settlement in Northern Ireland. Few, if any politicians are honest enough to admit that they were willing to deceive to make the right things happen.
This same emotional honest is missing from his justification for Iraq. He’s direct and clear that he still believes that it was the right thing to do.
He sees him self as a man who tried to bring out the positives in other, and there is significant evidence that this is the case. This is the man who got Gerry Adams and Ian Paisley to work together for peace in Northern Ireland, no one else could have managed that.
He does admit his admiration for George Bush, he calls him a man of genuine integrity and an idealist. You rather get the impression that Blair felt rather bent over by Bush and the relationship does not always reflect well on Blair. Again there is an honesty that was somewhat unexpected, but at the same time the mistakes are not truly acknowledged.
The title comes from his transition over the course of his premiership.
He started his term as a populist leader that completed the Labour journey to government started by Neil Kinnock and John Smith. Ten years later he had matured into a statesman led by his beliefs, popular or not. Ultimately he had to compromise and reshape some of his beliefs to become Labours longest serving PM, he’s open about the compromises he made and accepts where the journey ended was not where he wanted it to.
It’s interesting, and as these books inevitably do, it’s promises more than it delivers. However My Journey comes far closer than many of his peers in delivering something substantial.
The people at the top of cricket have a tough choice to make in response to the alleged betting scam rolling around cricket right now. First is hand out life bans to anyone involved and talk about putting the house in order. Or they can work at the root cause of mess and try to stop the situation from happening again
The first way is easy; the right way is far tougher.
If you are not aware, the short version of events is that three or four members of the Pakistan team touring England are under investigation for taking money to do certain things during a game. No one is accused of throwing a game, but it’s not far off.
The England and Wales Cricket Board’s priority seems to be to ensure that the rest of the tour goes ahead, but minus the players at the center of the betting scandal. Initially this looked like the right thing to do, but after giving it a little more thought I’ve changed my mind. It puts money ahead of principal, which considering the allegations seems somewhat appropriate.
On the field it is clear after the test series that England are the stronger of the two teams, take away Pakistan’s two best bowlers, wicket keeper and captain and there seems little point in playing the ten planned 20/20 and 50-over games. England will take them apart and it’s not a competition anymore.
In the longer term there is the issue of corruption in cricket. History shows that it’s been a big, ongoing problem within the sport, even if spot-betting is seen by many as less insidious than Hansie Cronje’s match fixing
As it always is, the root cause of the current problem money, or lack of it. The infrastructure of Pakistani top level cricket has always been questionable. Over the last couple of years after the terrorist attack against Sri Lanka in Lahore, every game played on the road and this has weakened the already poor organization even further.
The touring party are paid far less then their English, Indian and Australian counterparts. In this series it’s been suggested that the Pakistan players will have been earning perhaps 10% the amount of their rivals. Now someone comes along and gives you thousands to bowl a no ball, this is something that which will have little or no effect on the overall result, how difficult is it to say “yes”?
The long term challenge facing the International Cricket Council (ICC) is taking on the ongoing corruption in Pakistan cricket. This would be a long, tough road, but it’s either that or Pakistan stops playing at the highest level.
Then there is the question of what do you do with the players involved? A life ban seems extreme, especially in the case of the 18 year old Mohammad Amir who’s only been playing at this level for a year or so. His 6 wicket haul at Lords was deserved and he has the potential to be one of the superstars of this game. To see him banned for life would be a travesty.
I think the first step is take the players away from the problem, because the security situation does not allow Pakistan to play any games at home the team spends months at a time on the road.
The ICC has to reach into their coffers and put the game in Pakistan right. Have the top players play outside Pakistan, let them play the domestic game in England, India, Australia and so on. Give the players a chance to share in the money generated by the game in these countries.
Also the Pakistani team needs to be given a home for a few years untill they can start hosting series in Pakistan again. Dubai or the UAE seems the obvious candidates, they are states who have started using high profile sports to raise their profile in the world. Cricket may just fit into that.
The ICC will have to work to make this happen along with rebuilding the game inside Pakistan. It will take quite a leap of faith by the ICC, not to mention significant resources, but it’s only by tacking the problem at its source can it be put right. The source of this problem is the failure of the Pakistani domestic and international game.
The ICC can either keep Pakistan in the cricketing wilderness, or do the hard work to bring them back into the fold and give the players the stability to make living from the game.
I’ve spent time around professional sportsmen in the past, and the unfortunate truth is people who make living out of sport don’t take the “spirit of the game” view of sport. They tend to be far more mercenary and are generally more interested in making money during what may be a short and very tough career.
It is the journalists and the fans that add the narrative and romance that make great sport so special and meaningful. I’m as guilty of that as anyone; I do love sport and what it can mean to people, but at the same time for professionals it really is work.
His Tonyness announced this week that he had donated the advance and royalties of his memoirs to the Royal British Legion. The money is to help fund a new center to help the rehabilitation of injured service men and women. Unquestionably this is a very important and worthwhile cause.
However Tony Blair must be wondering what the hell he has to do to get some good press out of this. Up front it’s about $8 million, and potentially substantially more. When his donation was announced the London Times ran a headline “”Guilty” Blair gives £5m book cash to troops”. While the Times has never actually endorsed Blair or Labour outright (the paper gave no endorsement in ’97 and a conditional backing of the Tories in 2001) and has been a vocal critic of Blair over the year, the “Guilty” part of the headline seemed to sum up the mood rather well.
Over the following days the deal was questioned – would they get the full advance (yes)? Film rights? Yes. Foreign sales? Yes. What if the book did not sell? No refund to Blair. Would it be named after Blair? No. And finally would Blair take the tax relief on the donation? No, the legion would get the benefits.
So the deal was real, the money was guaranteed and still there were headlines claiming this was blood money and Blair was just clearing his conscience with it.
Unquestionably the British are a land of cynics and Blair is a global figure with a global reputation to protect. In the US there was a “huh, really?” response to the rather hostile reaction by the British papers. The Washington Post did not understand what it called the “withering response” the announcement was greeted with in the UK.
It’s simple, Blair led the country to war on a false premise, and the country has not forgotten that.
His legacy as a Prime Minister was tied so closely to Iraq and it being seen, in hindsight as a justifiable war.
The so-called “Blair Doctrine” described what a “just war” looked like. In short he felt that using preemptive action to prevent humanitarian disasters, such as genocide was the right way forward, and there is much to commend that idea. It advocated intervention for the right reasons and motives rather than for military ambitions.
In a speech in 1999 Blair proposed that five questions that should be asked:
Where the answer to all five questions is “yes” then there is a strong case for intervention.
The British generally see three conflicts in the last eleven years that this test has been applied to by the Labour government
Kosovo – probably the strongest argument for the Blair doctrine. Ethnic cleansing was halted, the Serbs removed and leaders tried for war crimes. While not totally stable today, it’s been left in better condition than in 1999. Not perfect, but it’s arguable it meets the case for intervention.
Afghanistan – The humanitarian side was a secondary consideration to the defensive war that justified regime change after 9/11. So far so good. The Taliban was routed, but al-Qaida was not eliminated. With a few exceptions the west has largely walked away. One thing the Afghanis and al-Qaida have is patience, they know the west will get tired and move away eventually. The way the British, Ottomans and Soviet Union have in the past.
Iraq – Tony Blair’s legacy in the eyes of many British people.
In 2004 Tony said of Iraq under Saddam – “Containment will not work… The terrorists have no intention of being contained. Emphatically I am not saying that every situation leads to military action. But we surely have a right to prevent the threat materialising; and we surely have a responsibility to act when a nation’s people are subjected to a regime such as Saddam’s.”
This speech represents a huge shift from the five questions that he used to lay out the Blair Doctrine. In this speech he gave sanction for the removal, by force of a dictator such as Saddam Hussein. This was a war fought based on poor intelligence and designed to stop potential future terrorist attacks. The link to the humanitarian principle is remote at best.
Blair lost a great deal of his credibility in Britain during the final years of his time in Downing Street. First by going to war with Iraq despite it not fitting his own doctrine, despite the intelligence saying that WMDs were present being questionable at best. And secondly refusing to apologize for what he did.
Since leaving office he has had no issue with using his profile and name to amass a significant personal fortune though business interests, meetings and speeches. This donation to the British Legion is seen by many as an attempt to improve his legacy with the British electorate.
The question is was this really a cynical attempt to wipe the slate clean, or is he honestly trying to makes amends? As someone who voted Labour in ’97 and ’01 I hope it’s the latter.
Finally, to answer the earlier question about what Blair has to do to catch a break from the British electorate. Saying you were wrong to start this war would be a good place to start.
Today’s big news is that Gordon Brown is stepping down from leading Labour in the hope it will make it easier for Labour and the Lib Dems continue talking. For Clegg personally it does a couple of things, first he is not seen as propping up Brown’s premiership. Secondly perhaps the biggest stumbling block between Labour and Lib Dems was the uncomfortable relationship between Brown and Clegg
But perhaps most importantly it’s put pressure on the Conservatives to come up with a deal that involves a promise on proportional or alternative representation. So far the conservatives have made vague noises that they will set up committees to look at AR, but nothing Cameron can be nailed down on so far.
After the very public opening of negotiations with Labour I suspect Cameron’s position will change rather quickly. This may be his only chance to become PM, after so many years in opposition I suspect the party will not give him a lot of time to get this sorted.
A vast majority of Lib Dems feel that a promise on AR is essential to any coalition deal no matter who the bedfellows are. A LibDemVoice survey claims close to 80% of the membership feel that a promise on PR is essential to any alliance or coalition.
Now that negotiations with Labour are publically going on and Brown is stepping aside, the Conservatives have to give a little more or potentially loose power to a Labour-Lib Dem-Nationalist-Alliance-Green coalition. This rather sketchy grouping will provide a wafer thin majority in the House of Commons (assuming Sinn Fein don’t take their five seats as usual).
Not exactly a super stable platform, but it’s enough go to the Queen with, and keep Labour in Number 10 for now and give the Lib Dems what they want (a say, a referendum on PR and a couple of cabinet seats) and time have the Labour leadership election.
A significant number of commentators seem to think a coalition government will only be lasting maybe a year or 18 months, probably not enough time for the Lib Dems to get their PR referendum completed. I don’t think the parties have the energy or finances to run another election campaign before then, while this is not American politics with high profile fundraisers, the parties still needs millions to run the campaigns.
An interesting side note, the three parties are rumoured to have spent around 30 million pounds during the campaign. That gets spent in a single state here for the senate races and is maybe 10-15% of what a single party spends for the presidential election.
The initial exit polls have been published just as the polls closed. They show the Torys on somehting well over 300, Labour on 255 and the Lib Dems getting somewhere in the mid-60′s
If the Tories were much above 300 seats in the House of Commons they could pretty much get business done with the help of the Ulster Unionists and perhaps a few other deals.
If they end up with a figure closer to 300 the Lib Dems and Labour might fell they are in a position to say “Hold on, you’ve no mandate”