Should anyone be in any doubt that the new decade will be
challenging, the Times today provides a helpful primer. No, not the 11 month
Brexit negotiation which Ursula von der
Leyen has already dismissed as next to impossible and is now supported by Phil
Hogan, the Trade Commissioner who expects the Government to ditch their
legislation and beg for an extension to the transition period – expect the BBC
to join this bandwagon, fff – but the foreign policy issue of the UK
relationship with China and the future of our increasingly individualistic
society. James Kirkup makes a compelling case for confronting our ambivalence
to China in the shadow of ratcheting rivalry between that country and the USA
and poses the question, what will it mean to the West if China can deliver
sustainable growth and prosperity to hundreds of millions of people without
giving them votes? Equally tellingly, reflecting upon the emergence of our
permissive society in the 1960s which has led to multiculturalism, identity
politics and victim culture, Melanie Phillips observes that, far from creating
harmony, this hyper-individualism has destroyed social cohesion and promoted
division. She laments that the young are “not taught how to think but what to
think,” and that there has been a retreat from reason. Some challenges for the
West, you may agree, which may relegate our future relationship with the EU to
something of a side-show? Meantime,
Happy New Year!
Tuesday, 31 December 2019
Sunday, 22 December 2019
The Christmas Irritant List 2019
I apologise for the late publication of the Christmas
Irritants List for 2019 but, at the last minute, in stupendous acts of Darwinian purification, several
entries on my draft list disqualified themselves during the general election
process. Hopefully we shall never see them or their species again. So here they
are, the remaining 2019 top 10, in ascending order
of irritation. There is no-one from Channel 4 this year and I enjoyed a much more
agreeable year by not watching it but, from occasional peeks at Sky News, Beth
Rigby, she of the grating elocution and ludicrous lippy, makes it in at No 10. Beth
was eclipsed by another TV “personality,” Gary Winston Lineker. Surely there is
little to add to Gary's mission to save world except the advice, stick to football?
Lewis Hamilton keeps his place at the front of the grid for bling and another
year of formulaic and insincere self-deprecation. As does St Matthew of Parris
whose incessant whinging has somehow found its way into The Times and the
Spectator despite the increasing desperation of his wishful thinking. Just
ahead, however, is the even bigger whinger Ian Blackford whose strategy in promoting
Scottish separation will surely drive us to barricade Berwick-upon-Tweed to
keep out the noise. Into the top half of
the table comes the snidish winnet Ian Hislop, closely followed by Jeremy
Hardy, who, according to Wikipedia, was a comedian. The talentless and squinting
Claudia Winkleman eases into third place – get your hair cut pet! There was not
much to choose between the Duchess of Sussex and this year’s winner but I shall
give the relentlessly woke Meghan the
benefit of the doubt, particularly since she and Harry are giving us all a
break by keeping their royal heads down for a few weeks over Christmas – our
gain is surely North America’s loss? Which leaves the winner’s podium clear for
the gruesome gargoyle Elton John. What more can be said about this pompous,
sanctimonious, virtue-signalling, shirt-lifter apart from expressing the hope
that he keeps his self-righteous stream of consciousness to himself in 2020?
Saturday, 21 December 2019
Overseas Aid
Mushroom has often questioned the wisdom of distributing, by
law, 0.7% of GDP in overseas aid. For an
internationally indebted country like ours, automatically handing over huge
chunks of cash to overseas good causes before properly addressing domestic
priorities, for example defence, seems silly.
It is the sort of morally superior gesture which goes down well in
Islington but, I suspect, cuts little ice in South Shields, Scunthorpe or
Sunderland. Indeed, the shadowy Dominic
Cummings appears to have his eye on the Department for International
Development, examining how that departments £13.4 billion annual budget might
be better spent in furthering British foreign policy objectives. When, as a country, we are dependent upon the
goodwill of international financiers to lend
us the money to underpin our increasingly unrealistic domestic policies, it
makes sense to examine how we can get more bang for a buck out of foreign aid. One suggestion is to subordinate gift aid to foreign policy by rolling up DfID into the FCO. Predictably,
such radical thought has enraged “officials.”
Apparently, they argue, that (surprise) the foreign office are very good
a diplomacy but they don’t have the “skill sets” to doll out vast quantities of
public moolah. It makes one wonder just
what the job description of a DfID official looks like and to whom they are accountable?
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