Monthly archives: April 2009


Scottish Parliament Motion on UK Complicity in Torture

Bill Wilson MSP has put down the following motion in the Scottish Parliament:

Short Title: UK Government’s Admission of Complicity in Torture

S3M-03949 Bill Wilson (West of Scotland) (SNP): That the Parliament

considers the Foreign and Commonwealth Office’s recent report on human rights in which the UK Government tacitly admits to using “intelligence possibly derived through torture”; further notes Craig Murray’s statement that the names of sources are omitted from intelligence reports so that it cannot be proven that torture was used in producing that intelligence; believes that the report therefore negates the UK Government’s supposed condemnation of torture and that when it uses evidence obtain from practices such as immersing victims in boiling water, as used in Uzbekistan, or taking them to the point of drowning , as extensively practised by the United States of America under the euphemism of waterboarding, then it is as guilty as the government or agency that carries out the torture, and is of the opinion that torture does not protect lives but simply ensures that the victim provides whatever “evidence” is required by the torturer and that the use of torture can only increase hatred and violence, not reduce it

His office have put out the following press release:

UK Government’s admission of complicity in torture highlighted in Scottish Parliament

Dr Bill Wilson, an SNP MSP for the West of Scotland, today lodged a motion in the Scottish Parliament highlighting a recent human rights report by the Foreign and Commonwealth office that contains a tacit admission the UK Government uses evidence obtained through torture.

Dr Wilson commented: “The UK has a long and appalling record when it comes to human rights. The latest revelation is of a piece with its support for Indonesia’s genocidal Suharto regime, its treatment of the inhabitants of Diego Garcia, its earlier support for sanctions against Iraq and its later invasion of that country, and its support for Israel, despite the latter’s ongoing occupation of Palestinian territory and its brazen flouting of the human rights of Palestinians and various opponents of its brutal policies (not least the brave Jewish Israeli youngsters thrown into prison for refusing to serve in the Israeli Defence Force!).

“The UK Government’s weasel words cannot disguise its effective support for torture. As my motion makes clear, this undermines any pretence the UK might have to higher ethical ground. How can the UK effectively combat terrorism when it condones atrocities committed by its so-called friends and allies? The bitterness and hatred stoked by this hypocrisy is surely considerable.

“Furthermore, it’s nonsense to suggest that tortured people will say anything other than what they think their interrogators want to hear. If you are taken to the point of drowning and believe that the only way you can save yourself is to say that X, Y and Z are members of Al Qaeda, then you would likely do so, regardless of the truth.

“Perhaps the worst aspect of torture, however, is that those who have taken part in it are driven to justify what they have done. Of course they want to believe that the cruelty they have been guilty of produced useful information, and so they are likely to go to great lengths to deceive both themselves and others in this regard. Having justified it, then, they will persist in practising it.

“Torture is always wrong in my opinion, and the ‘ticking bomb’ argument a dangerous myth. The criminals complicit in torture, who can be found at the highest levels of the UK Government, must be held accountable. ”

My analysis of the FCO’s stunning admission to receiving intelligence from torture is found here:

https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2009/03/fco_finally_adm.html

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Treasury Civil Servants Must Be Sacked

The budget not only shows the massive cost to ordinary people of saving fatcat bankers from the consequences of their multiple Ponzi schemes.

It also shows the total politicisation of the Civil Service under New Labour.

The Budget figures on borrowing, tax and spending going forward have been massaged to give the Chancellor political cover, by being based on impossible economic growth projections.

Nobody but nobody believes the Treasury forecast of 1.25% economic growth in 2010 and 3.5% in 2011. The IMF does not believe it and not one respected independent forecaster is so optimistic.

Vince Cable just described it as “Utter fantasy”. Vince Cable is quite correct.

But, as the BBC’s Nick Robinson just told us “Senior Treasury officials say that they stand by these projections.” That the senior civil servants in the Treasury have signed up to impossible projections, to give political support to the Chancellor, is a betrayal of all the values that are supposed to be represented by our Civil Service. What they have signed up to is not in the range of intellectually respectable opinion.

This is not difference of opinion. This is deliberate lying about the country’s economic prospects, by those entrusted with the stewardship of the economy.

Remember these are the same Treasury officials who just six months ago, also with political motivation, projected the fall in GDP this year as, at the top of the range, -1.25%. Just six months later they have radically revised that to -3.5% (which is still an underestimate of the collapse).

The situation is a disgrace, but not an accident. It is a reflection of the relentless politicisation of the senior ranks of the Civil Service under New Labour. Nowhere has that process been more thorough and ruthless than at the Treasury under Gordon Brown. There are now no senior civil servants, in key positions of influence for the budget, who are not New Labour apparatchiks.

Hence this politically motivated forecasting and its execrable quality.

After the next election and once these forecasts are shown for the specious ill-motivated propaganda that they are, every civil servant who signed up to these forecasts must be charged with gross misconduct, sacked, and stripped of their massive index-linked pension.

Not enough has been done to ensure that the bankers who fed fat on their Ponzi schemes cough back their ill-gotten gains after bringing disaster on us all. But the same must apply to the Civil Service too. The Augean stable Brown created must be swept clean of his bullshit so-called public servants.

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Budget Advice

The debt and borrowing forecasts in the economy are appalling. The announced borrowing of approxiimately $750 billion over five years is already astonishing, but it is predicated on ludicrously inflated economic growth rates.

Nobody outside New Labour believes in the economic growth projections of 1.25% in 2010 and 3.5% in 2011. So in fact the real borrowing figure is likely to be over 1 trillion dollars.

I am poor and I don’t worry too much about money. But if you have any savings, in sterling or invested in something sterling denominated, get out now and get it into euros. The pound is going to fall spectacularly over the next eighteen months.

Just two other points then I’ll forget the budget. For Darling to pretend that 2.5% is a real terms increase for pensioners is a plain lie. Few pensioners pay mortgages, so the large majority do not benefit from the fall in the RPI due to mortgage payment reductions. Food and energy costs feature disproportionately in their budgets, and real inflation for pensioners is well over 2.5%.

The small increase in income tax for the rich is long overdue, but the bastards nearly all have accountants who will help them avoid it.

Nick Clegg is making a very good speech indeed, but nobody is listening. I will post it tomorrow.

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Sickening BBC News Propaganda

At 07.00 this morning, BBC News gave a mention of less than ten seconds to the release from anti-terror questioning of the nine men they still called “terror suspects”. This was followed immediately by a non-news piece on the testing of barriers to protect us from car bombs, which gave the BBC the excuse to show two bomb explosions at 07.03, right at the front of the news. That will take people’s minds off the fact the terror plot was a fabrication, and get them good and scared again!

The BBC gave massive coverage to these innocent mens’ arrest and Gordon Brown’s and Jacqui Smith’s lying statements about them. The real story is the concoction of huge terror scares by politicians for propaganda purposes. But you won’t see it on the BBC.

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Gordon Brown and Jacqui Smith Terror Lies Revealed

Only two of the twelve people arrested in dramatic “terror raids” in the North West of England are still in police custody. Nine more were released from anti-terror detention on Tuesday. Their arrest was first headline on all news bulletins and announced by no less than the Prime Minister himself. Sky News is saying that despite the total lack of evidence against them, they are still regarded as a security threat and thus are being deported – thus getting rid of the embarassment of these innocent men being able to talk to the press..

This was the only major UK political blog which had the courage to stand against the manufactured terror panic and false patriotism, and point out that the whole Easter Bomb Plot story stunk to high heaven from the very first minute:

The reasons why these “Terror raids” might be the subject of political timing could not be more obvious. Both Jacqui Smith and Gordon Brown were getting a well-deserved media pasting over the outrageous ripping off of the taxpayer for personal benefit through expense claims. The Metropolitan Police were under extreme criticism for their unprovoked killing of Ian Tomlinson.

So this morning, instead of the news headline being the disgraceful fact that the policeman who launched an unprovoked assault from behind on Ian Tomlinson has still not been arrested, the headline is that the police have saved us all from certain death.

Let me be plain. I am not saying that terrorism does not exist. I am not saying that those arrested are innocent. I do not know. I am saying that Brown and Smith’s involvement in operational police arrests, and the fact that less than 1% of those arrested under anti-terror legislation in the UK have ever been charged with anything connected to terrorism, gives me the right to be suspicious of what is undeniably, at the very least, politically very fortuitous timing.

https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2009/04/politically_tim.html

There was in fact never any intelligence that there was going to be an Easter bomb plot. And vast expenditure of police and military resources failed to find anything more sinister than sugar, and some photos of Manchester taken by students in Manchester.

https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2009/04/bomb_squad_in_d.html

The mainstream media and the so called parliamentary opposition are determined to keep the vast over-hype of the terror threat going.

https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2009/04/jacqui_plays_th.html

But it is obvious from evey internet outlet that has a comment page, that they have lost a large proportion of the men and woman in the street. The government’s desperate fallback position of branding them a security risk and deporting them absolutely without evidence, is a sickening abuse of power and evidence of a continued desire to ride a wave of xenophobia aimed at overseas students.

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The Deepest Split in the Tory Party

Being in opposition disguises the fact that the Conservatives are still a deeply split party. The huge divide on Europe actually has a close relationship to their still deeper split over the most important fault line in British politics – that authoritarian/libertarian divide.

New Labour, of course, have pinned their colours unreservedly to the authoritarian mast. We have seen the greatest erosion of civil liberties and parliamentary government since Britain became a democracy. There remain some Tories who are instinctively libertarian, like Rifkind, Clarke and Davis. But as examplified by Chris Grayling’s dreadful parliamentary performance against Jacqui Smith yesterday, many have an atavistic urge to be even more authoritarian than New Labour.

Right at the top of the Conservative Home website today is a video from Fox News supporting torture – arguing in effect that torture works.

http://conservativehome.blogs.com/torydiary/2009/04/new-ipsos-mori-poll-puts-tory-lead-at-13.html

The Tory party in the country, and even more so in parliament, would be deeply split by those who are horrified at this trampling on ancient liberties, and those who have bought in to the neo-con agenda.

You can hide that kind of fundamental divide in opposition. You can’t in Government.

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Iain Dale and Music

I admire both Iain Dale and Tim Ireland for their immense contribution to political blogging in the UK.

Politically I am much closer to Tim, and this blog simply would not exist without his original and continuing technical support, given freely. That is true of several other high profile blogs as well. He is a kind and generous friend. He is also a an inspired blogger.

Iain, on the other hand, raised the profile of blogging through dedication, access, professionalism and being on what for now is the winning side in party politics. And Iain can write very well.

So I view the real bitterness of the current feud between the two of them as a crying shame.

I was worried about exposing so much of myself in my posts on bipolarity, particularly with regard to hypersexuality. There is undeniably an element of embarassment in revealing inner feelings. But I am cheered that this is not nearly so embarassing as Iain Dale’s listing of his hundred favourite pop songs. I am still giggling. Cliff Richard at No 1? Maybe Iain can join Tony Blair on his holiday’s in Cliff’s villa.

https://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=6214838&postID=637274325927897345

You will be relieved that I am not going to give you my top 100, but this would probably be my number one.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vkWpb3l8txg&NR=1

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That Ahmadinejad Walkout

On Newsnight last night, Jeremy Paxman challenged UK Ambassador Peter Gooderham and obtained the information that the walkout had been agreed upon by EU states before the session, ie before they heard a word Ahmadinejad had said. They did not have a text in advance.

This stunt was a combination of the pompous and the immature that had Miliband written all over it.

Watching Paxman torment Gooderham I was reminded of a posting by Cipriano on Harry’s Place yesterday:

this is why stories surface regularly about the low quality of FCO people these days, mindless apparatchiks for the most part

http://www.hurryupharry.org/2009/04/20/craig-murrays-hypersexuality/#comments

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Iran, Israel and Durban II

Iran and Israel are both guilty of repeated abuse of human rights. In Iran, the jailing of Roxana Saberi for spying is an injustice, and a deliberate slap in the face to genuine overtures from Obama to cool the diplomatic temperature. But it is a comparatively small transgression in Iran, a country which executes gays and radically curtails freedom of speech, the rights of women and numerous other freedoms that should be universal.

Now let us look at Israel. Israel is indeed a country founded on a racist premise and based on massive ethnic cleansing, and where racial discrimination is built in to the legal fabric of the country. That situation is getting worse, not better.

https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2009/04/institutional_r.html

The BBC reports President Ahmadinejad today at the UN anti-racism conference thus:

Mr Ahmadinejad, the only major leader to attend the conference, said Jewish migrants from Europe and the United States had been sent to the Middle East after World War II “in order to establish a racist government in the occupied Palestine”.

He continued, through an interpreter: “And in fact, in compensation for the dire consequences of racism in Europe, they helped bring to power the most cruel and repressive racist regime in Palestine.”

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/8008572.stm

I have not seen a full text and do not know what else he said. But insofar as the above s accurate, I in fact broadly agree with it. The only real point of dispute would be the extent to which people were sent as opposed to just went. But the general argument seems to me factually indisputable. Whether he is the best person to say it, given Iran’s own human rights record, is another question.

So there is hypocrisy from Israel, from Iran, and fom the Western countries including the UK who theatrically walked out of the speech.

There is a fascinating quote from Peter Gooderham, UK Ambassador and our representative at the conference:

Speaking to the BBC Radio 4’s PM programme, he said of the Iranian leader’s accusation of Israeli racism: “That is a charge we unreservedly condemn and so we had no hesitation at that point in leaving the conference hall.”

Which is interesting as the FCO used to acknowledge institutionalised racism, enshrined in legislation, as a major problem in Israel. One more New Labour step appears to have been taken down the Zionist road.

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Jacqui Plays the Terror Card – As I Predicted

So Jacqui Smith has played the terror card in a wild bid to save her job. It is extraordinary she can warn us of grave danger and at the same time look so smug about it. She spoke in the House of Commons of a “Suspected bomb plot” despite the absence of certain key elements normally associated with the phrase “bomb plot”.

Like a bomb.

Or a plot.

This was not pointed out to her, because she was faced by a Tory idiot, Chris Grayling, who believes that the Tories can win votes by being even more resolute looking in the face of danger than Jacqui Smith. And watching less porn.

You might expect a real opposition to ask questions like:

“You told us that a serious bomb attack was planned for Easter, ten days ago. Where then is the bomb? Where are the explosives, the detonators? Are they in the same metaphysical space as the Iraqi WMD?

Instead Grayling taunted her that she had not devised a system which will stop terrorists entering the UK, if we do not know they are terrorists yet. You don’t say. The obvious answer to this is to stop anyone at all from entering the UK, and make everybody here already leave. I suggest we start with Chris Grayling.

When we have the Tories and New Labour in this downward spiral of competitive xenophobic populism, I really despair. Chris Grayling had me thinking for a minute he could be worse at the job than Jacqui Smith. That ought not to be possible.

Meantime we have this from the police:

Manchester’s counter-terrorism unit said most of the searches relating to the terror arrests had been completed and material collected was now being assessed.

“As this complex and detailed investigation continues, officers are sifting through the extensive amount of information so far received to assess its relevance to the investigation,” a spokesman said.

That is police speak for “We’ve found bugger all, but under New Labour legislation we can still hold them another fortnight to pressurise confessions or turn one against the others to make stuff up in terurn for getting out, or we can always bring in a paid supergrass from Pakistan again.”

Please note there are definitively no bombs, no explosives, no detonators, no firearms or weapons of any kind. There was no Easter bomb plot. Whether the men were really dangerous extremists is open to grave doubt at present.

After 12 days of detention the police still do not have evidence to charge anybody with anything.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/8008784.stm

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Our Appalling Public Transport System

One of those days which is totally infuriating. I am blogging to you on a stationary train as I attempt to go to York. The train keeps stopping for long periods because, as the guard keeps saying, “There are three trains in front of us.”

We were due to get the 14.30. However the Central Line was entirely suspended, the District Line had “severe delays” and the Piccadilly Line train we eventually got sat still for a quarter of an hour in Hammesrmith before proceeding at a snail’s pace between long rests. In short, a journey that normally takes about 45 minutes between our home and Kings Cross took 1 hour and 45 minutes, and we just missed our train.

National Express then told me that our tickets had no validity on another train; they could not even be upgraded. I had to buy new ones at on the day prices, which cost me over three hundred pounds. Now their train is getting later and later. I am only escorting somebody and coming straight back. I shall now miss my reserved train back and have to buy another on the day ticket.

Our privatised train services have good rolling stock and track only because it was funded by massive taxpayer subsidies. . Meantime their on the day ticket prices are almost three times the EU average per mile.

I have foreign visitors who are completely bewildered by how bad our public transport is, how incomprehensible the fare schemes are and in general what a rip-off the system is. I fear we get too accepting.

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Evidence of UK Complicity in Torture

I have just sent this email to the clerk to the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Human Rights:

Mark –

Do we have a venue yet?

I will be assisted by Professor Douwe Korff, Professor of International Law

at London Metropolitan University and an acknowledged authority in this

area. While I was Ambassador in Tashkent he did work on torture there for

both the OSCE and the British government. Members of the committee may wish

to take advantage of Prof Korff’s presence to ask him questions including

about the interpretation of complicity in Article 4 of UNCAT, which concept

is at the heart of my evidence. If the committee do not wish to do this,

Prof Korff is content just to sit with and advise me.

I will also refer to the discussion of the use of torture intelligence on

page 15 of the FCO’s latest annual report on human rights, and to the four

legal memos on CIA torture techniques recently released on the instructions

of President Obama, in the context of the US/UK intelligence sharing

agreement. It may be helpful for members of the committee to have those

documents to hand.

Best wishes,

Craig

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Is There A Doctor In The House?

Back in December, I posted on the appalling Sir Michael Wright, that standing rebuke to the very name of judge.

https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2008/12/the_disgraceful.html

I have been hoping he would haul me up for contempt, so I could use the line of Thomas Muir:

“If it be a crime to be contemptuous of you, then commit me for life, for it will be a crime without end”.

Every day for four months a continuous stream of doctors have come to this blog, straight to my post on Sir Michael Wright. They come here from this url.

http://www.doctors.net.uk/forum/viewPost.aspx?forum_id=1&post_id=3574090

Unfortunately, not being a doctor, I can’t get in to see the context of the link. But I am baffled as to how it can remain so prominent on its site that it has sent people streaming here over such a long period. And why are doctors so interested anyway?

If there is a doctor in the house, perhaps they might offer some assistance.

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Amnesty International

There is a story in yesterday’s Sunday Herald about one Scottish Amnesty International activist’s involvement in securing the release of Saidzhakon Zainabitdinov, an Uzbek political prisoner. I have been a guest in Saidzhakon’s home, and he is a good and brave man.

http://www.sundayherald.com/news/heraldnews/display.var.2502888.0.retired_scots_teacher_saves_activist_who_exposed_massacre.php

I am a fan of Amnesty International.

I have seen at the sharp end how their simple methodology really can save lives. The arrival on the prison fax machine of letters from abroad about a named prisoner really can save him or her from torture and death. The fear that people are watching, that perhaps one day there is a possibility of retribution, is put into the mind of officials and guards. As the fax reaches a minister’s desk or a letter is opened in his office, all politicians are vain enough to have some concern for their international image.

Every day Amnesty’s members make the world a better place in their old-fashioned, caring way. So I salute Angus McEwan of Sutherland, and thousands more like him.

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The Economy – Worse Than You Think

In the budget this week, Alistair Darling is expected to revise his prediction for the drop in GDP in 2009 from -1.2% to -3.4%. This sustains the Brown/Darling record of appalling predictions.

The CBI think it will be worse, at -3.9%. I think it will be yet worse, at -4.1%.

I spent Sunday with friends at the LSE dusting off my economic modelling skills. I should state the obvious, that the LSE is in no way associated with my predictions (though if they turn out wrong I reserve the right to blame their modelling!) It is also fair to say they found some of my methodology unorthodox, particuarly the need for a steady intake of Margaux to fuel the input assumptions.

I project GDP will fall by -4.1% in 2009 and by -1.8% in 2010. The Treasury is leaking -0.1% as their 2010 projection. Given the financial services sector is in shock and manufacturing output down by over 18% in the first quarter of 2009 year on year, I can only presume they are relying on massive expansion in the capuccino and dry cleaning industries.

I have assumed that Darling’s budget this year and next year will be close to fiscal neutrality, with a nod towards belt tightening. He has absolutely no room for fiscal stimulus and with an election in the next 15 months he can’t be too sensible.

But the fiscal position looks awful. I project a budget deficit of a massive 12.4% of GDP in 2009 rising to 13.3% in 2010. By 2011 our national debt will reach 1980s Italian proportions of 118% of GDP. Compare that to the 40% guideline for membership of the Euro.

That prospect will spark a collapse in the pound before mid-2010 leading to escalating interest rates, forced on the Bank of England as the government struggles to raise more money because the pound is such a bad bet. That will undoubtedly mean they will have to go cap in hand to the IMF within the next 18 months, but still will not be able to avoid those higher interest rates.

Inflation will come back, reaching 4.5% by April 2010 and shooting upwards after that to 7.1% by end 2010 and entering double digits in 2011. That will put an end to further quantitive easing. House prices still have a further 11% to fall before nominal prices start to increase from July 2010, but will still be falling in real terms. Unemployment will peak in March 2011 at 3.02 million.

The problem Darling faces is that he has no room for fiscal stimulus, because all the funds that may reasonably be raised have been wasted on the bottomless pit of Ponzi banking.

Because of the corner into which Darling has painted himself, and on the basis that New Labour have no stomach for radical restructuring of the economy and measures such as bank nationalisation, the only thing that would truly improve the prospect would be a radical budget rebalancing – perhaps a 2% increase in total tax yield combined with a 5% cut in public spending, over a three year period. That would reduce a raft of linked problems including interest rates, inflation, deficit and debt burden. It would accelerate unemployment and make the recession sharper, but would on my projections give something of a J curve effect.

The other thing that would help might be joining the Euro, if we could beg them on bended knee to accept us as a basket case. But the other European countries would be crazy to take us on.

I realise many people find spending cuts unpalatable. But we are in a very bad place. We are there because Brown and Darling failed to regulate casino banking, and then used all our remaining national credit to refund losses to the wealthy gamblers.

The economy is completely screwed – even worse than most forecasters and pundits are telling you, and certainly worse that Darling will admit on Wednesday.

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Hypersexuality and Bipolar Infidelity – Is It Better For Having A Name?

It has been a hard but rewarding week for political bloggers here in the UK. I remember feeling much the same sense of relief when watching the Major government fall apart. The horrible Jonathan Aitken – who I liked marginally better as an aristocratic spiv than as a charismatic christian – was in a different style the same kind of creature as Damian McBride and the other New Labour horrors.

But then we got Blair, who was worse than a Tory. There’s a lesson there somewhere.

Anyway, today we are going to have a day off and, because you’ve all been very good, I am going to blog about sex.

I received an email from a Josh Peters accusing me of being a racist misogynist for my post yesterday on Ayesha Hazarika. I recall being attacked as “Anti-semitic” in the Times by crazed neo-con David Aaronovitch. In fact I think I am genuinely blind to race. Not just some but most of my close friends are not caucasian. I don’t think anyone who actually knows me would consider me in the least racist.

I am not, however, blind to sex. I attack people in positions of power where I feel there is an abuse, and most of the time I find I am attacking men. I don’t think yesterday’s attack on Hazarika, Toynbee and Harman was motivated because they are female, but their sex did come into it because they had indulged in a very expensive “Gender equality” jolly to Ghana funded by the taxpayer.

But while I feel there is no issue to address with the accusation of racism, I do have an issue which I need to square – with myself – over my attitude to women.

If you look through the amazing reader reviews for Murder in Samarkand on Amazon, you will find a repeated theme, even from people who loved the book. They dislike my attitude to women and the sexualised way I portray them.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Murder-Samarkand-Ambassadors-Controversial-Defiance/dp/1845962214/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1240134863&sr=8-1

All I can say in defence is that the book honestly reflects the way I think and feel. When I see a young woman, my mind instantaneously runs a sexualised check on her physical appearance and, if I find that appealing, I start acting in the way I can best calculate to enhace my chances. All that happens more or less subconsciously, or at least without any need for conscious initiation on my part.

I always rather presumed that all heterosexual men went throught the same process all the time. Apparently I may be wrong.

In a less clinical way, the process is described several times, sometimes more and sometimes less fully, in Murder in Samarkand when I describe looking at various girls, most notably of course Nadira. Plainly many people find this off-putting.

I would say this.

I accept that it may appear that I pay more attention to sexual attributes than is the accepted norm.

But I do not accept that this in any way means that I undervalue women’s other attributes.

I may find a girl very sexy. But that does not mean in any way that my perception and appreciation of her intelligence, determination, work-rate, courage, dignity, humour etc is any less. Or their opposites if appropriate. In fact in both Murder in Samarkand and The Catholic Orangemen, I give concrete examples of women whose careers I believe were unfairly held back by glass ceilings, particularly in the FCO, and write a great deal about the rights of women and my work to prevent abuses.

In short, I do not acept the thesis that it demeans women to fancy them. It demeans anyone if you only fancy them.

None of which addresses the issue of my tangled love life and the infidelity which has brought much pain to many people, most of whom did not deserve it. I also have to face the fact that I have told many lies to people in my love life, yet I am almost pathologically honest in any other context. What is that about?

I do not give the following as the answer. It is neither explanation nor excuse. It is, I think, nonetheless interesting.

My entire adult life I have suffered from what used to be called manic depression, and now is known as bipolar disorder. By and large I have struggled against it very successfully, and really major depressive episodes have only kicked in when there is a very big real world problem to act as a trigger. But there have been plenty of very bad days over the last thirty years, at both ends of the swingometer.

I took lithium as a student for a short while, but I felt that the changes to the chemical balance of the brain were making Craig Murray disappear, and were replacing him with someone much too bland. The outbreaks of incredible energy and capacity for work, of wit and intellectual vim on the highs were invaluable. I am NOT trying to put myself in their league, but if I give Winston Churchill, Spike Milligan and Stephen Fry as examples of famous manic depressives, you will get some of that feel of genius bordering on madness. A famous psychiatrist (whose name escapes me at the moment) said that if Churchill hadn’t been manic, he would have known the situation was hopeless after Dunkirk and sued for peace. Instead he had that vision and energy to lift a whole nation.

So I have lived on willpower my whole life, a feeling of intense concentration like permanently walking a tightrope of mental stability. You get tired.

I have also avoided psychiatrists as much as possible. Doubtless if I ever have to ask for unemployment benefit, I will therefore fall foul of Purnell’s reintroduction of the concept of the undeserving poor. Anyway, it is probably because of this avoidance of the medical profession that I was told this week for the very first time that my behaviour was subject to “bipolar infidelity” and “hypersexuality”. Apparently this kind of sexual behaviour is so very frequently part of bipolar disorder, that it is actually one of the diagnostic tests as to whether you are bipolar or not.

So there you are. I now know that my presumption that most men think about women just like me might well be wrong. I do not intend to use the existence of the terms to justify or even continue my behaviour. That sounds to me akin to a plea of guilty but insane (only a joke, mental illness campaigners). I am extremely happy with Nadira, with my children, and the prospect of our new baby. I am being faithful. This post does not presage a plunge into priapism.

I am not sure that I even really believe in “Bipolar infidelity”. But I will remember the phrase, “I suffer from hypersexuality.” Sounds like a brilliant chat up line…

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Ayesha Hazarika Embodies the Sickness of New Labour

Ayesha Hazarika is the epitome of New Labour’s contempt for the taxpayer. This former professional comedienne and PR specialist is being paid £53,882 pa by hard-pressed taxpayers to be Labour Party “Special Adviser” – or spin doctor – to Harriet Harman, Minister for Women and Equalities and Leader of the House of Commons.

http://www.chortle.co.uk/comics/a/632/ayesha_hazarika

That is just the comedienne’s slary. There are substantial expenses too, like the recent jolly of Harman and her delegation, including Hazarika, to look at gender issues in Ghana. If we accept that Harman needed the taxpayer to send her to look at gender issues in Ghana – which arguably has better gender equality than the UK – did Harman really need to be accompanied by her Private Secretary plus Hazarika plus her constituency secretary? How much did this jolly cost the taxpayer?

http://www.ghanaweb.com/GhanaHomePage/NewsArchive/artikel.php?ID=160592

What benefit did the taxpayer get from the jolly in general and from Hazarika’s participation in it in particular? Is Harman going to claim her constituency secretary’s fares in her MP’s expenses?

Why does Harman need not just one but two female Labour Party hacks as Special Advisers in highly paid non-jobs funded by the taxpayer? The Foreign Secretary, for example, only has one position, split between two people on a job share. Harman has Hazarika and Anna Healey – any relation?

Salaries alone for Labour Party “Special Adviser” hacks like Hazarika and McBride come to over £6 million a year in salaries alone. That is up from £1.2 million under John Major, which was bad enough already.

They do nothing for the taxpayer. Their job is to burnish their masters’ image, and they are pretty lousy even at that.

New Labour takes the view that the taxpayer will fund unlimited numbers of these hack. We will keep people like Hazarika in her highly paid useless non-job as special adviser to Harman, who herself has a useless non-job. That is an example of just how out of touch New Labour really are. They care for nothing except their own power, positions and patronage. Which is why we do not care for them.

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Stupid White Women

Taking a break from patronising the working classes here, Polly Toynbee and Harriet Harman flew to Ghana to patronise some black people. Toynbee’s hack piece – which could have been churned out before leaving, being the standard rant against IMF conditionalities – is printed in today’s Guardian.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/apr/18/ghana-economy-imf-polly-toynbee

Those who have read The Catholic Orangemen of Togo will know of my deep love for Ghana. Indeed, I was there last week. Among other things, I spent a delightful evening with my old friend Kwabena Duffour, now the new Finance Minister, and his extremely intelligent and well-informed family. We talked over the macro-economic situation in some detail.

Plainly Toynbee has not read “The Catholic Orangemen” or her article would not contain so many basic errors.

The first thing to say is that Ghana’s revenue base is very strong. In fact, contrary to what Toynbee says, the “credit crunch” has had very little effect on Ghana so far. It had little exposure to toxic debt and, unlike ours, its economy was not based on a series of Ponzi schemes.

Toynbee is right to note the problem of high inflation, in particular in world food prices, but quite wrong to link this to the credit crunch. Third world food inflation has been an escalating problem for at least four years. The credit crunch may actually ameliorate it. Of course falling demand in the World economy and lack of availability of commercial credit must start to show some effect. But Ghana, unlike the UK, should not go into recession.

There is no structural problem. The rather sad fact is that the Ghanaian government is facing a liquidity crisis due to what may be politely described as fiscal racklessness, but I would more bluntly describe as looting, by the outgoing government.

I say that with a heavy heart because President Kufuor and several senior ministers were good friends of mine, but they seemed unable to control corruption in the last couple of years – which is generally agreed to be a major factor in why they lost the election.

I agree with Toynbee absolutely on the question of water metering for the poor in third world countries. I rail against it in The Catholic Orangemen and it was a Malthusian example of the neo-con control of the IMF. But actually we won that one a few years ago. Still, an easy Aunt Sally for Toynbee’s lazy piece.

It is worth noting that Toynbee will have been paid more for her turgid outpourings in the Guardian just this week, than the ladies of the credit union she touchingly describes will see in ten years.

Toynbee is simply wrong when she writes that “The IMF wants subsidies for electricity removed, again hitting the poorest hardest”. Ghana provides electricity to all its users at below the cost of production. The situation has got worse as the availability of hydro-electric power reduces due to climate change. Electricity is subsidised by the Ghanain taxpayer. Taxation in Ghana falls most heavily on the poor: – it is not very progressive, with VAT the major contributor. So the poor are paying for the subsidy.

But the poor use very little electricity. The electricity subsidy is probably worth no more than a few dollars a year to the ladies she patronised with their cash in a biscuit tin under a tree. By contrast, the US Embassy, with its two vast office buildings, Ambassador’s Residence, compound, school and scores of staff houses, receives an electricity subsidy of over a quarter of a million dollars a year from the Ghanaian taxpayer.

Electricity subsidy disproportionately benefits the rich at the expense of the poor. The solution is a social tariff to help the poor, not the continuation of blanket subsidy. Toynbee is fighting the IMF of ten years ago – perhaps understandable at her age. The IMF in fact has a pretty open mind on the matter. I have discussed it with them directly – unlike the lazy Toynbee.

Toynbee is a dull New Labour hack, an apologist for war criminals, and a well-paid patrician from a wealthy family who likes to cluck around showing how sorry she is for the poor. Just like Harman, in fact. Neither of them know anything about Africa. They do as much good for Africa as the stunts of Madonna.

Toynbee thinks she can fly in for a few days and suddenly become an expert on Ghana. Yet she has cheer-led for New Labour for twelve solid years without noticing they have been a disaster for social mobility, education, civil liberties and international law.

Polly Toynbee, self-appointed guardian of the poor of the world – and stupid muddled-headed old bat.

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