"Off with the heads of all City types!"

I want to see hedge-fund managers tipped into cage fights with naked Gypsies; bank managers wrestle with lions in the O2 arena; failed regulators thrown to alligators in the Royal Docks; short sellers in pits of snakes; and distinguished City economists try their luck with sharks. They've had their heyday, their bonuses, their Porsches, their fine wines and oafish ostentation - they've had their fun. Now for ours.

To the guillotine!

Who wrote these stirring words in his newspaper column today?

Seumas Milne in The Guardian? Robert Griffiths in the Morning Star?

No. It was Matthew Parris in The Times.

That's right: Matthew Parris, the former Conservative MP and right-wing political commentator.

It shows you how far the pendulum has swung when we have conservatives like Parris calling for 'City types' to be marched off to the guillotine for the destruction they have caused to the world's economy.

The hatred and anger towards 'City types' felt by the public at large is only going to intensify in 2009. Yesterday, the Daily Mail- yes, The Daily Mail- reported on its front page how 'Goldmine (Fill Your) Sachs' was awarding its staff bonuses totalling £4.3bn - a large chunk of the £6.5bn it received from US taxpayers.

There's a revolutionary air in Britain, America and in Europe at present and if the socialist left cannot forge the alliances (including with decent 'old' conservative factions represented by the likes of Matthew Parris) that are necessary to sweep the corrupt, globalist regimes from power, then they'll only have themselves to blame.

The Smoking Ban: Another New Labour disaster

Today's Daily Mail reports:

The ban on smoking in public has failed to increase the number of people quitting, a report revealed yesterday.

The proportion of men who smoke has actually risen since the ban in July last year while there was no change at all among women.

When she introduced the ban, the then health secretary Patricia Hewitt said: 'This is an enormous step forward for public health. It is going to make it easier for people who want to give up smoking to do so. Over time it will save thousands of lives.'

The figures, coming after years of declining smoking rates, are a massive blow to Labour's public heath policy.

It gives me no great pleasure to say to supporters of the ban 'I told you so'. But those of us who opposed the draconian New Labour legislation did warn that it would not lead to an increase in the number of people quitting. We also warned that the ban, while not improving public health, would however lead to the closure of thousands of pubs, social clubs, bingo halls and other institutions. And this of course is exactly what has happened.

The 2007 law- motivated by the New Labourites' class hatred- was one of the most ill-thought out pieces of legislation ever passed by the British Parliament. Will we get a 'mea culpa' from those responsible?

Of course not. The party that has refused to apologise for leading our country into a disastrous, illegal war in Iraq (and an equally unlawful and deceitful one against Yugoslavia), is unlikely to say sorry for helping to destroy social life in Britain, is it?

UPDATE: Charlie Marks has news of another great New Labour 'success'.

After 11 years of Labour government, the gap between the income of the richest and poorest households is unchanged, according to new figures.

Income distribution in the UK has not changed since 1991, the Office for National Statistics figures indicate.

Then as now, the top fifth of households have 42% of total disposable income, and the bottom fifth just 7%.

lraq's WMDs finally found

Some breaking news: five and a half years on from the invasion, Iraq's WMDs have finally been found. Mick Hall has the details.

"The biggest financial scandal, probably in the history of the markets"

Another day, another tale of turbo-capitalist greed.

In any truly moral society hedge funds would be illegal, but the scandal surrounding the fund of Bernard Madoff (pictured above) means that enacting such legislation might not be necessary: as the BBC's Robert Peston says, the Madoff scandal is likely to accelerate the disappearance of hedge funds.

The Madoff scandal has been described by investor Nicola Horlick as "the biggest financial scandal, probably in the history of the markets". But I find it hard to find much- if any- sympathy for those who have lost their money in the scam. This is a tale of very rich people and very rich institutions, who weren't satisfied with the enormous wealth they already had, but who wanted more and more. In fact, that's been the story of the whole thirty years of neoliberalism. The globalist elite- through their political emissaries- destroyed the mixed-economy system which served the interests of the majority and instead replaced it with an economic model in which only a small minority of bankers, capitalists and speculators would benefit.

That system is now disintegrating before our very eyes- brought down by the very greed which was behind its adoption in the first place.

UPDATE: There's a great comment by Daniel Palliant in response to Philip Delves- Broughton's excellent First Post article 'The Bonfire of the Vanities 2008'

I have to tell the World that the whole of Wall St is a giant fraud. Just in case you didn't know. Most of us who have had anything to do with so called free markets know, in our heart of hearts, that it couldn't last. Anyone surprised?

FURTHER UPDATE:
"There’s only one correct response to the Madoff affair - to laugh like a drain"- is the verdict of Chris Dillow, over at Stumbling and Mumbling. I couldn't agree more.

Ue wo muite arukou - and the decade when we were true cosmopolitans

Earlier this year, I wrote an article on how, back in the 1960s, Britain was much more open to European cultural influences than it is today. But Britain- and the US- wasn't just more open to European culture, but the culture of other nations too.

I was reminded of just how cosmopolitan the world was before the turbo-globalists took over while listening to the excellent Sound of the 60s show on Radio 2 earlier today.

Can you imagine a song, sung entirely in Japanese, getting to the top of the US pop charts today- and staying there for three weeks? No, me neither.

The song in question 'Ue wo muite arukou' or 'Sukiyaki' as it was marketed in the US and Britain-became a huge international hit (it reached number six in Britain) and spawned several cover versions. None were quite as good as the original, which you can see being sung above by Kyu Sakamoto.

The sad truth is that the era of turbo-globalisation hasn't led to a greater cross-fertilisation of cultures as its supporters claimed it would - but the overwhelming dominance of an introspective, bland and dumbed-down transatlantic global culture that isn't a patch on the true, life-enhancing cosmopolitanism we had in the 1960s.

Take it away, Kyu.

European smokers light the fires of resistance

Another day, yet another victory in Britain for the anti-smoking zealots. Not content with Britain having arguably the most draconian anti-smoking laws in the world, we're now to have a ban on shop displays of tobacco.

In the rest of Europe however, the zealots are not having it all their own way. Here's my piece on the growing pan-European smoking resistance movement, from The First Post.

If you hold to the stereotype of Germans as people who love obeying rules, however ludicrous, then think again. Across Europe, a resistance movement is growing to the many draconian bans on smoking, and leading the rebellion are the Germans.

Germany is home to a plethora of anti-ban organisations and smokers' rights groups including the 'resistance' group Smoking Rebels, who record pro-smoking rock songs and rail against Europe's new anti-smoking 'dictatorship', and the Pan-European Association of Smokers, whose purpose is to "achieve reasonable conditions for smokers in all European countries".

Bans on smoking in Germany have been circumvented by bars charging a nominal entry fee and thereby transforming themselves into private clubs, which still have the right to set their own smoking rules. Bans have also been overturned in the courts: this summer the Federal Constitutional Court upheld complaints made by small bar owners in Tubingen and Berlin that the bans were damaging their business.

Meanwhile leading German personalities, including the 89-year-old former Chancellor Helmut Schmidt, a life-long heavy smoker, have openly flouted the new laws. Schmidt and his 88-year-old wife Loki (above) were pictured smoking at a theatre reception in Hamburg. A case bought against them by an anti-smoking group, which accused the theatre of abetting the pair by providing them with ashtrays, was dismissed by the city's authorities.

It's a similar story of rebellion in the Netherlands. There, the ban on smoking tobacco (but not, incidentally, marijuana) in enclosed public places, introduced in July, has been widely ignored. In the city of Den Bosch last month, the majority of pubs allowed their clients to smoke in protest against the ban. Around 500 establishments have been fined for breaching the new law, but faced with the prospect of losing their clientele, many bar owners have preferred to allow their regulars to carry on smoking.

In both Holland and Denmark, smokers' parties have been formed. The Danish Smokers Party (Rygerpartiet) has as its first stated goal "to get parliament representation, in order to combat smoking laws". It fights "for the right to diversity and nonconformism" in Denmark and opposes the "daily discrimination, harassment and persecution of tobacco smokers". The party has recently been renamed the 'Party against Nannyism'.

Ironically, the country in Europe where there has arguably been the least resistance to anti-smoking legislation is Britain. The country that stood alone against the Nazis in 1940 is the one which seems keenest to observe laws that were first introduced by the Nazis in Germany in the 1930s. Whatever would the inveterate cigar smoker Winston Churchill have made of that?


UPDATE: You can hear me arguing against the British government's ludicrous ban of tobacco displays, on the BBC World Service's Europe Today programme, here. My contribution is about two-thirds into the programme.

Oliver Postgate: A "warm and unambitious man"

He was the voice not just of my television childhood, but of everyone other person who grew up in 1960s and 70s Britain.

Oliver Postgate, whose death was announced yesterday, was the creator of such magical television gems as Ivor the Engine, Pogles Wood, Noggin The Nog, The Clangers and that wonderful saggy old Orthodox Miaoist Bagpuss, who was recently voted the nation's favourite tv animal of all time.

Together with his partner Peter Firmin, Postgate produced some of the most memorable-and charming children's programmes of all time. A far cry from the brash, in-yer-face and dreadfully charmless children's programmes of today.

Postgate was a remarkable man, and a member of a remarkable family. His grandfather was the saintly George Lansbury, the most left-wing leader the Labour Party has ever had. Postgate's father, Raymond, was a socialist journalist and a founder member of the British Communist Party. His aunt and uncle were Margaret and GDH Cole, both socialist writers (Raymond Postgate and GDH Cole co-authored 'The Common People'- one of the first accounts of working class history). His cousin was the famous actress Angela Lansbury.

In addition to his television work, Postgate was also an inventor (inventing a machine for electroplating plastic buttons and an electric rotary lawnmower), and a writer- he blogged in recent years for the New Statesman.

A lifelong pacifist, he was appalled by the imperialist arrogance which lay behind the neoconservative doctrine of 'regime change'.

Here's a great post of his from a couple of years back:

The other day I heard John Bolton - who lately resigned his post as US representative designate to the United Nations - saying how unforgivably evil it was of the Syrians to (allegedly) assassinate certain Lebanese politicians who were thought to be obstructing Syria’s ambition to gain political control of Lebanon. If true, that is certainly a despicable thing to do, definitely not the sort of behaviour we expect from a member of the community of nations.

Then, later, I heard that US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice had affirmed that the US expenditure of materials and human lives on a war intended to obtain political control of Iraq and bring to it US-style democracy is - and has been - as she put it, "a worthwhile investment".

Comparing these two projects, one can see that, although basically similar in purpose, the (alleged) Syrian investment is, in purely arithmetical terms, far more economical in outlay than the US one, in that only one or two lives were lost and little physical damage occurred, rather than the half-million or so lives that are thought to have been lost in the massive destruction unleashed by the invasion of Iraq by the US and its allies.

Postgate was, according to his Daily Telegraph obituary, "a warm and unambitious man". What a wonderful epitath in an age in which the ruthless individualistic economic system we live under encourages us to be anything but "warm and unambitious".

Above you can watch a clip of the master at work in a wonderful BBC4 documentary about Postgate and Firmin.