Dog Day Afternoon

Ashford, Middlesex had its own armed bank robbery Monday afternoon. The siege lasted barely a quarter as long as events in the film Dog Day Afternoon, though it was almost as hot.
The police did not acquit themselves well, cordoning off the entire area without explanation. I had to waste my time rescuing a teenage overseas visitor left stranded at the railway station.

Instead of sending people to traffic school for minor motoring infringements police officers should attend charm school themselves, and they might get the cooperation from the public they say they crave. Instead, most crimes go unreported, and our elders live as prisoners in their own homes.
With the Ashford bank robber caught red-handed surely he can go straight to prison, with no reason ever to release him. He made his choice.

Who’s Laffing Now?

As the economist Arthur Laffer pointed out in the 1970s, increasing the rates levied by certain taxes will actually reduce overall revenue.
The UK Budget will be announced later today, and there is talk of some tax rates going up, especially taxes on capital.
And that’s where I’m confused, because critics of any increase in such rates predict diminishing returns. Surely a reduction in overall taxation is a good thing?
Or could it be that so many entrepreneurs would simply emigrate, leaving us all much worse off?

World Cup on Television

Oh for a life on welfare benefits with all the time in the world, and no need to worry about getting a flat screen TV.
Six months after my television broke down I finally found time to buy a new one today. No more squinting at a 14-inch portable, though watching BBC iPlayer via a computer monitor is quite handy.
I ended up buying the TV that was displaying the last three minutes of my team winning today’s World Cup match.
I’m not a great football fan and I didn’t even know until yesterday that Chile had reached the World Cup finals. So far they’ve won both matches played.
I first followed Chile after getting embroiled in the ecstatic celebrations in Santiago moments after they qualified for the 1998 World Cup -- all completely non-violent.

BP Political Blow-out

I continue to be shocked by how supine are reports about the Gulf of Mexico oil spill by the world’s media.
I was pleased to see that President Obama’s brother was recently denied entry to Britain for being a criminal, a sanction that should equally apply to the President himself.
For the Deepwater Horizon disaster is far more political than environmental.
The current spill is not large in relative terms. Much more oil escapes into the Gulf of Mexico from natural fissures in the seabed each and every year, and has done for millions of years. A similar explosion on a rig owned by the Mexican Government in 1979 released at least three times as much oil in shallow water, some of which washed on to Texan shores.
The truth is, drilling in the Gulf of Mexico is not just physically complex but is laced with more political corruption that in any other oil region -- more than Saudi Arabia, Nigeria and Azerbaijan put together.
BP is well up to the task in all other regions of the world, but its exemplary safety standards are continually vetoed by it’s US subsidiary, backed by pressure from the local trades unions and oil services giant Halliburton (which has inappropriate influence within the US Government and to whom BP had subcontracted the drilling).
The Americans think they know best.
In any other part of the world the domino series of failures that led to the Deepwater Horizon explosion would just not have been allowed to develop. For that reason the American political establishment is fully culpable, and gives the Third World a bad name.
The US Government should be indemnifying British taxpayers and investors for losses incurred by BP, not the other way round.

Contradictory Views amongst Voters

People often say they only ever see politicians at election time.
Conversely we you call on people after an election they complain why are you calling now, there’s not an election is there? You just can’t win.
Here’s another conundrum. Liberal Democrat voters believe Conservatives and LibDems are all the same now (following the coalition at Westminster). I’m not quite sure of the answer to that one, though it does indicate that no one is sure what the LibDems stand for any more.
Another amusing contradiction comes from the ComRes opinion poll last week. 78% of people prefer proportional representation, and yet in the same breath 72% do not like the political horse-trading that follows a hung parliament!
They say the customer is always right.

Unconventional Lifestyles

Aired on the BBC last night was the story of Anne Lister who led an unconventional lifestyle during the first half of the 19th century. Little was known at the time.
When a relative discovered her coded diaries in the 1890s he was forced to keep quiet about them by his own similar lifestyle, during even more puritanical times.
Even in the 1960s the content was considered too risqué by the authorities, and by the time they were finally published in 1988 they were considered so outrageous that they were rumoured to be a hoax.
And yet even in these so-called enlightened times a cabinet minister resigned last week for similar behaviour. And please London Daily Telegraph, stop repeating the pretence that the David Laws report would have been published without revealing his sexual orientation. Without that crucial admission there was no story, and there would have been no resignation.