As usual, where Craig Murray treads, the rest of Europe follows in time. Of last year’s Eurovision song contest I blogged:
Last night I voted for Azerbaijan because I thought the girl was seriously hot.
https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2009/05/eurovision.html
Tonight I expect the rest of Europe will catch on.
UPDATE
In the end I voted for Armenia, as having an altogether better class of tottie.
Warm praise to Nikolai Alekseev and the other organisers of today’s Gay Pride mini-march in Moscow. Having been banned for the last five years by Mayor Luzhkov, Putin and Medvedev, and after an appalling catalogue of political violence and persecution, activists managed to hold a ten minute street demo in Moscow today with nobody injured or arrested. This was achieved by posting false trails all across the web as to where it would be, and by activists buying new clean mobile phones in the last day to organise it.
Many congratulations also to Peter Tatchell, who went across to help and has become a tremendous advocate of human rights worldwide. Peter said of the banning of the march:
“It is the latest of many suppressions of civil liberties that happen in supposedly democratic Russia. Many other protests are also denied and repressed, not just gay ones. Autocracy rules under President Medvedev,”
It is also worth noting that the British Embassy refused to help, including refusing to host a gay social on Embassy premises to mark Moscow gay pride day. That is an appalling failure – typical of the FCO – to show support for the rights we are supposed to espouse.
It is very difficult to look at the dissolution honours list for the Lords without retching. Lord Prescott, Lord Reid, Lord Blair of Stockwell Tube Station? Then there are the Tory donors. Floella Benjamin is the only redeeming feature. Indeed, I hope someone can find Brian Cant and put him in there too.
But seriously, surely this lot, with so many of Gordon Brown’s backroom chums as well, stretch to breaking point the credibility of the Lords? It beggars belief that we still have this ancient stench-pit of corruption and patronage as an integral part of our legislature.
Nick Clegg has promised Lords Reform from this coalition, but Clegg deferred to the Tories by mentioning “grandfather rights”. The Tories are insisting that existing peers – or at least a large number of them – should remain members of the Lords until they die. So no democratic upper chamber until Ian Blair, John Prescott and John Reid peg it? Not to mention the new Tory peer 33 year old Oxford graduate Nat Wei? It is ludicrous.
Grandfather rights are unacceptable. The Lords must be swept away, and replaced by a democratic upper chamber with no unelected grandparents invited. Preferably elections should be by PR, but a fully elected upper chamber by 2015 will be over a hundred years overdue.
I am among those who has been very impressed by David Laws’ performance in his brief ministerial career. And I have read carefully the Lib Dems blogs – which seem universally to be defending him, like this.
http://markreckons.blogspot.com/2010/05/david-laws-should-not-resign.html
http://www.libdemvoice.org/david-laws-issues-statement-on-his-expenses-and-sexuality-19728.html
The difficulty is that the Commons rules stated quite unequivocally that an MP could not claim to rent a room in a home owned by their partner. In 2006 a specific amendment was made to make that crystal clear. Laws does not deny he broke the rules, and is paying the money back.
The point made by Lib Dems throughout the blogosphere is that, if Laws and his partner had owned the homes jointly, he could have claimed the mortgage payments. That is of course true. But Laws did not do that, and the rules are explicit that the alternative of paying rent to your partner is not allowed.
Laws’ explanation for his behaviour is that he did not wish to come out as gay. That is his right. Had he therefore not made any second home expenses claims, he would have forfeited £40,000 and deserved great sympathy for the sacrifice made to his domestic privacy. Nobody would have launched an investigation into why the very wealthy David Laws did not make a second home claim.
To “protect your privacy” by making taxpayer funded rent payments to your partner against the rules, was always going to be counter-productive. It also involved what I presume (and I do not know) is a further little lie to the Commons that he was renting a bedroom in his partner’s house, when it is surely more likely that they share one.
It is, to say the least, extremely unfortunate that this revelation about David Laws should come out at this moment – and the Telegraph’s timing opens a whole raft of other questions. And what Laws has done is less bad, for example, than Michael Gove’s second home flipping. But there is no point to the Liberal Democrats if we do not aspire to higher standards than Labour and the Conservatives, and it is deeply disappointing to see the LibDem blogs’ tribal rally around Laws.
Laws has just announced a public sector pay freeze. He is the man who would have to announce cuts next year that will inflict very real pain upon public sector workers, benefit recipients and public service users. Having a millionaire to do that is already difficult. Having a millionaire, who broke the rules on expenses claims and trousered £40,000 he had to pay back, to do that is simply untenable.
Laws should do the decent thing now.
Lolohai Tapui has been jailed for four months. If we jailed every illegal immigrant for four months, that would constitute over 300,000 prison man years. The Independent story is entirely condemning of Tapui and exonerating of Scotland.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/baroness-scotlands-housekeeper-jailed-1985126.html
But who was really exploiting who here? £6 an hour, for God’s sake! In the heart of Central London? Anyone who has had an 0207 phone number knows that anyone over the age of 18 who will work of £6 an hour is an illegal immigrant. I am not nearly as rich as Baroness Scotland, and we pay our student babysitters £8 an hour.
£6 an hour = illegal immigrant. £6 an hour = cruel exploitation. The wrong woman is in prison.
There is much consternation at the apparent decline of Gulnara Karimova’s multi-billion dollar company, Zeromax – which owns Uzbekistan’s most valuable economic assets.
http://www.eurasianet.org/node/61072
Gulnara is of course the daughter and favoured successor of dictator “President” Islam Karimov. Zeromax is, in addition to interests encompassing gold, uranium, coal, cement, cotton, hotels, night clubs and sex-trafficking, the Pentagon’s major conduit for land supply to US forces in Afghanistan.
The immediate cause of the shutdown appears to be arrears of US $440 million on multi billion loans given to Zeromax by the Uzbek government. The loans were secured on assets which Zeromax obtained in the first place for next to nothing from the Uzbek government’s closed “privatisation” process, otherwise known as “let the President’s daughter have everything”. Zeromax has never made any attempt to repay any of the loans.
Outside analysts are speculating that the moves against Zeromax represent a power grab against Gulnara by Prime Minister Mirzayev (the man who ordered the specific Murder in Samarkand which became the title of my book).
That seems to me improbable. More likely Zeromax has simply outlived its usefulness as a vehicle. I suspect that it is repositioning, simply. Zeromax worked pretty well for several years as a front to hide the fact that the Karimovs were hiving off much of Uzbekistan’s economic production for personal benefit. The cover has been well and truly blown for a couple of years now and Zeromax was attracting jealousy. So it gets jettisoned like a snake shedding an old skin. I don’t think you’ll find Gulnara has lost a penny.
If Zeromax goes down, its debts will be written off, and I will be astonished if the productive assets do not still remain under the control of the Karimovs, in a new vehicle or variety of vehicles.
Much more worrying is further evidence of the reach of the Karimovs in Washington. Paid Karimov lobbyist and former lawyer for Zeromax, Carolyn Lamm, is now President of the American Bar Association – how sickening is that?
http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2009/11/13/lowering_the_bar?page=0,1
Presumably Lamm played a key role in the huge Pentagon supply contracts landed by Zeromax.
Almost worse, in the light of Karimov’s banning of all anti-Aids organisations and jailing of Maksim Popov,
https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2010/05/please_write_to.html#comments
is that Gulnara Karimova was feted at Cannes by Amfar – the American Foundation for Aids Research – as co-chair of their mega celebrity bash Cinema Against Aids at Cannes.
http://www.amfar.org/spotlight/event.aspx?id=8298
I several times telephoned AMFAR to ask how thay could justify celebrating Gulnara (two years running now), in the light of her regime’s purblind attitude to AIDS – not to mention the fact that the Karimov-Dostum narcotics trafficking racket is the main cause of AIDS in Uzbekistan. AMFAR refused to answer or return my calls.
I call for a boycott of AMFAR because of their continuing friendly links with the Uzbek regime. I do hope that people will continue to donate money for AIDS research, but to other less tainted charities.
I am against Academy Schools, unless the proposed flood of new ones are going materially to be different from the New Labour model.
In practice what happened in Academy Schools was that a business, organisation or individual was able to put in just 5% – yes, 5% of the capital costs, and nil – yes nil – of the running costs. For that, the “sponsor” got to choose the curriculum, while the school received a massively larger share of the available pot of state capital for schools, than would be given to any “normal” LEA school.
The state was still paying the vast bulk of the cost – 98% of capital and running costs in the first ten years. Non-academy schools were being starved of capital. The provider of the 2% got to be the boss and influence our children.
For Tony Blair, being a goggle-eyed God-inspired mass killer himself, it was an advantage that those most interested in this ability to influence our children were various forms of religious nutters, often distinguished by a disbelief in evolution.
So far as I can judge, the main difference between the New Labour model and the Gove model is that the swivel-eyed nutters may now not have to put up any money at all before they take over the school. This needs to be carefully watched.
I warmly welcome the demise of the national curriculum and the end of micro-management of teachers by the state. That is an advance. But that should lead to an empowerment of democratically elected lcoal councils – the local education authorities – not the committal of our children to a variety of unelected and unaccountable bodies, firms and individuals. I am not at all hostile to the idea of educational cooperatives under loose LEA guidance – but there is no sign to date that the new model looks like that.
It does not bode well that, while the Queen’s Speech was announcing a rebirth of civil liberty, Brian Haw was being arrested in Parliament Square. This was yet another bad move by the Met. They know Brian very well by now, and are fully aware that he is not a threat to the Queen. It beggars belief that, after they have stared at his every moment for years, they might suddenly think he was storing weapons or using drugs, This was crass and insensitive.
The rest of the Parliament Square “Peace Camp” is quite a different matter. I have not spoken with Brian recently, but I can tell you that it is wrong to presume that he welcomes or trusts all those comparatively fleeting campers who join him in good weather.
My own view is complex. There is, I believe, a genuine difference between the right to protest in Parliament Square – which I strongly support – and the right to live in Parliament Square, which in general I don’t support. Brian’s vigil is different because its maintenance became the only way to maintain the right to protest there under Draconian New Labour legislation. Camps, vigils and occupations have their place in protests. But do I think anybody has the right to pitch tent in Parliament Square and stay for weeks? No, I don’t really.
Public spaces are public, and if you appropriate them to live there, that is a loss to the public.
Actually for me the real scandal of Parliament Square is the sacrifice of this public space to the bloody motor car. It is not a square, it is a horribly busy traffic roundabout. It has been made quite deliberately almost impossible to get past the traffic and on the the green area of the square. None of the many sets of traffic lights has a pedestrian phase allowing you to do that.
Westminster is a disgrace. What should be the great public areas of the country – the Embankments, much of Trafalgar Square, Whitehall, The Mall, Birdcage Walk, Parliament Square – are horrible spaces full of noise, pollution and danger. Cars should be banned from the entire area.
I do hope the mean-minded charges against Brian are thrown out, though I doubt they will be. Another measure announced in the Queen’s Speech was elected police commissioners. Now wouldn’t Brian be a great candidate?
Am really rushed off my feet – buying a house, 2 documentaries (one already commissioned), plus film and theatre developments and trying to write 2 books. So sorry for temp lack of blogging.
A society which ringfences its defence budget while cutting its universities, is reducing the value of its stock of civilisation.
There has been a welcome lack of triumphalism from the Tory visit to Afghanistan and, unless I have missed it, a welcome lack of posing in body armour and camouflage gear. The talk has been of speeding up the training of the Afghan National Army so we can leave. This is of course a figleaf – the Afghan National Army is an anti-Pashtun alliance with US weapons, and will never be able to control the country. But the pragmatic desire to get out of there, whatever the excuse, is welcome.
I have been much heartened to see Bill Patey very close with the delegation, as UK Ambassador to Afghanistan. Bill’s predecessor, Sherard Cowper Coles, famously advocated that we should remain in military occupation for decades more to try to improve Afghanistan. I can guarantee that Bill will have no such crazed notions.
I am having a fraught time with my attempted house move. It is so strange that I thought I would blog about it. The strangeness may be only a product of the years since I last bought a house.
I saw a lovely old home – a Grade 2 listed building, very dilapidated – earlier this week. It was advertised at 289,995, and I put in a bid of 275,000. The agent told me that a cash offer of 250,000 was already in, and that the seller was inclined to accept it for a quick sale. The house ad, he said, been repossessed. In these cases, the rule was that no offer was accepted until contracts were completed.
That sounded very unpleasant and I wished I was in Scotland where the law enforces some honour. But even more strangely, the estate agent said he had no idea if it was a listed building, and went on to deny my suggestion it had at some stage been converted to flats, despite the fact that it has three floors, each with its own recently but horribly installed kitchen and bathroom.
A phone call to the council confirmed it is indeed a listed building and it appears there was no permission for those changes, though I have to visit the Council to make certain of that last. But my several contacts with the estate agent since then have left me with the strong impression that they have a real desire not to sell to me.
In short, what they have said to me is that the 250,000 cash offer is going through, and they will not inform the seller of my higher offer unless I can show the cash. I have said I will be able to show the cash within seven days. They have said that if I show the cash before the 250,000 transaction goes through, they will tell the seller about me. But otherwise not.
That seems to me crazy. I should have thought even a corporate seller would want to know somebody had offered 25,000 more, and be given the option of waiting a very few days to see if he could show the money. The house has only been on the market a fortnight.
This is my email exchange with the estate agent today:
Hello…
I presume my 275,000 remains the best offer?
I today paid over 125,000 in cheques into my current account for the
deposit. These will take a few days to clear.
I have a second meeting with my bank (Natwest) on Tuesday morning to
finalise the offer in principle. So the finance will be fully in place
before the end of next week.
I have instructed, and paid, Mr … to carry out a structural
survey.
Please inform me of any developments.
Craig Murray
Afternoon Craig,
Thanks for your email.
We cannot put your offer forward to our corporate client till we have seen the following documents
Agreement in principle from your bank
proof of deposit
Kind Regards
Incidentally, the house plainly has not been a happy family home for many years so I don’t have qualms about buying a repossession.
Am I being paranoid? I have half convinced myself the estate agent is trying to sell for 250,000 to a local developer they know, avoiding stamp duty, not advertising the listed building status and suppressing higher bids. Or is this all innocent and normal?
I am writing an important letter to William Hague on his proposed inquiry into torture (via my MP to make sure an FCO bureaucrat does not bury it). I am marshalling my evidence but trying to keep it short, plain and unemotional.
So no energy or time for significant blogging today. Some thoughts to keep people going.
I am staunchly against fox-hunting. In my youth I was in the Hunt Saboteurs Association and remember great fun laying aniseed trails to disrupt otter hunts somewhere near Kings Lynn. I would happily do that again. I supported the ban on fox-hunting.
But I have changed my mind. I still strongly oppose fox-hunting, but I no longer think it should be illegal. New Labour changed my mind. They opened my eyes to the dangers of authoritarianism and the criminalisation of numerous activities. The mind that will ban protest outside parliament and make it illegal to photograph a policeman or railway station, is a mind seeking to abuse the power of the state.
New Labour convinced me that excessive state power is a real evil to weigh in the balance when considering how to deal with any issue. I consider fox hunting an ill, but state interference a greater ill. Any liberal should believe that the state should interfere in liberty as a last resort.
Other forms of social sanction can and should be deployed against fox hunters. Social disapprobation, ridicule, protest, peaceful disruption. But is the crushing hand of the state really required? No, I don’t think it is.
The same goes in my view for the smoking ban. I don’t smoke and hate cigarette smoke, But should it be illegal in pubs and restaurants, which are private property? No.
Lights blue touchpaper and goes back to his letter to William Hague…
On 10 May I blogged:
Poor Gary McKinnon provides an important test. The Tories and Lib Dems have said they would halt his extradition under Blair’s vassal state one way extradition treaty with the USA. New Labour apparently remain determined to extradite him – and that means Miliband and Johnson in particular. That should be food for thought for anyone considering New Labour leaders touted as more acceptable to the Lib Dems,
https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2010/05/the_mckinnon_te.html#comments
I am delighted today that Teresa May has called in the McKinnon case for consideration – something New Labour refused to do. It does appear that Conservatives and Lib Dems are going to keep their promises and stop the McKinnon extradition.
This is great news. Even better news is that page 14 of the full coalition agreement promises to change Blair’s vassal state extradition treaty in the UK. It is well understood that this was a grossly unbalanced treaty, allowing for extradition of UK citizens to the US, but not of US citizens to the UK. It is less often mentioned that the treaty, enshrined into UK law by Order in Council, debars the UK courts from any consideration of the evidence or merits of the case. The only power the courts have is to check the correct form of the extradition request.
This treaty is the perfect embodiment of Blair’s policy; total subservience to the United States and the abdication of any idea of natural justice. Those commenters on this blog who refuse to accept that this government is an improvement on the hateful New Labour crowd, increasingly sound like nuts.
In presenting the coalition agreement today, Nick Clegg started by talking passionately about freedom in the UK. That is a word New Labour almost never mentioned, except in the context of abroad. And when they spoke of freedom abroad, it was code for we are about to invade you and kill hundreds of thousands of people.
Yesterday saw a vital indictation of the viability of the coalition – and it was George Osborne who delivered an extremely good result.
Last week I blogged:
Next week, the EU Council of Ministers plans to adopt strict regulations enforcing transparency on hedge funds and private equity firms and limiting their leverage, ie how much they can gamble. NuLabour resisted these very sensible Franco-German proposals, because NuLabour was 100% bought by the City. The Tory right wants to oppose the plans because they are European regulations. Already we are hearing bleats that hedge fund managers will move abroad. Good. The attitude to these proposals will be an imprtant early indication of whether this government is more progressive than NuLabour.
https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2010/05/on_my_way_to_li.html
This is from the lead story on the front page of today’s Financial Times:
The approval of the controversial rules by finance ministers follows a similar endorsement by a group of EU lawmakers on Monday and brings regulation of the “alternative investment” industry closer.
Mr Osborne decided not to use up political capital in Brussels fighting to dilute an EU directive that has been ferociously pushed by France and Germany
end
More to the point, these regulations had been ferociously resisted by New Labour, just as Brown and Mandelson had ferociously resisted Franco-German proposals to limit bank bonuses and apply other brakes on casino banking. New Labour’s total defence of even the most extreme practices of most unacceptable faces of capitalism – hedge funds and private equity funds – was sickening.
It was notable in the election campaign that the Tories stance on banking regulation – in their manifesto, their rhetoric and the leaders’ debates – was much stronger than New Labour’s, and closer to the Liberal Democrats. There was room to doubt if this was just election populism. Osborne’s decision yesterday is a welcome sign that he Tories really are willing to take on City interests to which New Labour were slaves.
But the significance does not stop there. This decision also shows Cameron and Osborne are prepared to take on their own Europhobes. There will be fury from the combined forces of private equity millionaires and anti-Europeans, being poured down the lines into Conservative Central Office today.
Osborne in fact cleverly played the pro-EU card in the ECOFIN meeting and used his agreement to fund regulation to push forward the single market in financial services – something which has been disgracefully obstructed on continental Europe.
A friend of mine in UKREP Brussels tells me this morning that the view there is that it is great to have Ministers who do not confuse the interest of the City and the national interest as automatically the same thing.
And the icing of the cake for the coalition is that these very proposals for transparency and limitation of risk of hedge funds and private equity funds were initiated in the European Parliament by Lib Dem MEPs – led by my old mate Graham Watson.
We have the first fake terror scare since the election – and Theresa May has jumped in on the authoritarian side.
The BBC states that:
The alleged leader of an al-Qaeda plot to bomb targets in north-west England has won his appeal against deportation.
A special immigration court said Abid Naseer was an al-Qaeda operative – but could not be deported because he faced torture or death back home in Pakistan
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/8688501.stm
Note the alleged. The truth is that there is no evidence to convict Abid Nasser of anything. What they have is intelligence reports from Pakistan, certainly obtained under torture, and a communications intercept in which Abid Naseer talked of a wedding. As Sky News has been explaining all evening, the security services believe “wedding” is a code for a bombing.
On May 24, 2007 I blogged this:
Finally, a thought on communications intercepts. The government remain deeply opposed to the use of these in court. I am in favour. If surveillance has been properly and legally carried out, it should be admissible. The truth of the matter is that the Government does not want revealed how weak its so-called intelligence often is.
I can give one example. According to the US intercept agency the NSA, Al-Qaida frequently use the word “Wedding” as code for a suicide bombing. I recall as Ambassador being deluged with intercepts of “suspicious” conversations like “We’re going to a wedding in Bokhara.” Of such flimsy stuff is most of the material. If they keep it from court scrutiny, they can persuade natural authoritarian brown-nosers like Michael White to publish that it is “Solid”.
https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2007/05/more_right_wing.html
What is happening now is precisely the same circumstance I blogged about then. An innocent man is branded a terrorist by the security services, with no evidence that can be put before a jury. The media all then repeat it to ramp up the fear factor.
You may recall that in the current case, Gordon Brown had stated this was “a very big terror plot”. But the students arrested had no bombs, no weapons and possessed nothing at all connecting them to terrorism. The police announced they had found “a potential component of a bomb”. It turned out that this was less than a quarter of a kilo of sugar in the kitchen.
https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2009/04/gordon_brown_an.html
https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2009/04/when_in_trouble.html
https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2009/04/bomb_squad_in_d.html
What is a disgrace is the “Special Immigration Tribunal” which decided not to deport Abid Nasser, but to brand him a terrorist. These tribunals are an affront to every principle of justice. The security services presented evidence against Abid Nasser in secret. Meither Nasser nor his lawyer was allowed to see the evidence against him. It is on the basis of this secret evidence – to which Nasser had no opportunity to make a reply – that Mr Justice Mitting stated that he was satisfied Nasser was an al-Qaida operative.
Mr Justice Mitting is a complete disgrace to the British judiciary. That he should make such a pronouncement on a man who was not allowed to defend himself shows that he has no place on any bench.
The fact that no criminal prosecution has been brought against Nasser, because of insufficient evidence, underlines the fact that Mitting is a reactionary well suited to his role in a court with as much connection to justice as the Committee of Public Safety.
My good friend and old boss Sir Brian Barder by no means shares my liberal views. He supports, for example, the FCO line that it is right to accept intelligence gained from torture by friendly security services, if it helps combat terrorism. But Brian resigned as a judge from the special immigration tribunal precisely because he believed it was completely unacceptable that they heard evidence which the accused were not allowed to answer. The truth is that only extreme reactionaries like Mr Justice Mitting, people with no concern at all for natural justice, could consent to take part in ths farcical kangaroo court.
Theresa May, our new Home Secretary has been very happy to jump on the Islamophobic bandwagon. Lib Dems should point out that the real lesson of this case is the need to abolish the star chamber secret Special Immigration Appeal Courts, which should have no place in any democracy.
Iran undoubtedly pulled off a diplomatic coup with its announcement yesterday of a deal with Brazil and Turkey to store its low grade uranium. It is very hard for even the most ardent warmonger to claim that Iran is enriching uranium to make nuclear weapons, when that same uranium is in storage in Turkey.
But perhaps the most significant fact yesterday is one that does not bode well for Iran in the long term. It is that plainly the Russians were caught on the hop and struggling for a response. Russia has been Iran’s most powerful diplomatic protector, but in recent months the Obama diplomatic offensive to win Russia over on Iran appeared to have made dramatic headway. That the Iranians had not kept the Russians informed on the Brazil Turkey deal was a mistake – and led to eventual remarks by Medvedev that were not welcoming, and appeared graduated to the US response. Iran cannot afford to lose Russian support in the long term.
Under this deal, Iran is swapping some of its low grade for 20% uranium, and putting the balance in storage. In effect the whole lot goes to Turkey. It is worth noting that, according to the IAEA, all of Iran’s uranium is verified and accounted for. None has gone AWOL. This deal would leave Iran with nothing to make a nuclear bomb with. It is also worth noting – a point the western media never cover – that Iran has a perfectly legitimate requirement for 20% uranium. It has a reactor donated by the United States which produces medical isotopes and which runs on 20% uranium.
I should stress that I have no time at all for the murderous group of theocratic nutters who constitute the Iranian regime. For their own warped reasons, it suits them to heighten international tension around speculation that they may wish to produce a nuclear weapon. They are anything but straightforward, and anyone who believes that the welfare of the Iranian people is the primary concern of Iran’s governing elite is quite wrong.
But there is no indication that Iran has the ability for years to produce a nuclear weapon, and this arrangement makes that ever more plain. If any nation has a genune concern that Iran is seeking to develop a nuclear weapon, this agreement to remove almost the entire stock of uranium from Iran can only be welcomed.
The failure to welcome this step by US and UK governments indicates that their actual agenda does not relate to Iran’s nuclear programme at all. And I still wait for a British minister to say something about Israel’s very real and very large stockpile of nuclear weapons.
I am extremely worried by the judicial activism involved in a series of decisions to prevent strikes. This year both Unite and RMT have been prevented from holding strikes, amid general undisguised establishment glee that workers have not been allowed to go on strike.
In today’s judgement against Unite (and for British Airways), there was no dispute that union members had genuinely voted to go on strike. But they had been notified of the result of the ballot by posted notices, and the court ruled that this did not meet the requirement that all members must be individually notified of the result.
In this country, posting a notice is sufficient notification to the neighbours if you apply for planning permission to build something next to them, and posting a notice is sufficient notification to the community if you plan to get married. The judicial ruling in no way follows the spirit of the law, which is intended to ensure that union members democratically vote on strikes. They did.
Free marketeers are quite wrong to crow over this blow to Unite. If you believe in the free market, you must believe that a contract is freely negotiated between master and employee. The employee must have the right to withdraw his labour.
An employee forbidden by the state to withdraw his labour is a slave. It really is that simple.
Having travelled exensively around the globe, I have never found anywhere where hotels offer such poor value for money as the UK. One thing that particularly annoys me is a charge for guests to access the internet.
I was annoyed enough when I was staying in the Dundee Hilton at £110 a night, and being charged another £10 for internet access. But here in the Coorwne Plaza in Birmingham I am paying £130 a night, yet being chraged another £15,99 for internet access.
Complete rip-off. I would certainly never advise anybody to visit the UK on holiday.
The atmosphere of the conference was fascinating – most definitely not triumphalist, but sober and determined. There was a general view that we are heading for a period of unpopularity, but that we are doing the right thing in constructing a government.
Having paid attention to about 70% of the speeches, I am still of the view there was no earthly reason to have the deliberations in secret.
There was a general air of surprise at just how much the negotiating team had gained in policy commitment from the Tories, but combined with a strong undertow of distrust of many of the Tory figures in the government. Successive Lib Dem ministers promised they would make the Tories stick to their commitments.
I an increasingly of the view that in the negotiations the Lib Dems, being natural policy wonks, were concentrated on getting policies on paper, whereas the Tories were pragmatically unconcerned about what was on paper, but rather determined to get their people with their hands on all the main levers of power. There is a danger that Lib Dem ministers will be disconnected gears.
The conference passed a whole series of amendments reaffirming the Lib Dem commitment to policies including eventual abolition of tuition fees – and no increases – and PR. All the biggest cheers came for attacks on New Labour’s appalling civil liberties record. Simon Hughes made the best speech of the day.
The coaliton agreement was passed overhelmingly – I would estimate by about 1,000 to about 30. I voted for it, and was much comforted in that by the fact that old friends like Tony Greaves, Richard Moore, Alistair Carmichael and David Grace did so too.
Meeting old friends was the best bit of the day. It was great to talk with Richard Moore again – he was a key influence on the teenage Craig Murray, and his passion for human rights and democracy in the developing world has not been dimmed by his 79 years. He made a rousing speech, which included the observation that any “rainbow coalition” would have been in hock to the bigots of the DUP.
I spent a most enjoyable half hour sitting at the back of the hall with Alistair Carmichael, making silly jokes and giggling as though we were students again. It was hard to remember he is now the government deputy chief whip – and I think he relished the chance to forget it for a few minutes.
As always with party conferences, it was what you learnt in the bar that was by far the most interesting.
The negotiations woth the Tories on reform of the House of Lords are worrying. The Tories are insisting on “grandfather rights” – those now in the House of Lords, or a large percentage of them, will remain members until they die. Including those new Lords about to be appointed by the parties. They also propose that elected members of the House of Lords should serve a twelve year term. I’ll say that again, a twelve year term. Worryingly the Lib Dem negotiators seem inclined to go along with that ludicrous proposal.