Rupert Remembers, Jeremy's Hunted

Until yesterday Adam Smith was a ministerial special advisor, although clearly not quite special enough. When writing his resignation letter, we can but wonder whether his free arm was being twisted. His rapid removal follows revelations at the Leveson Inquiry, suggesting information flowed between News Corp and the Department for Culture, Media and Sport, deemed inappropriate given the company’s campaign for complete control of BSkyB. Labour still have the scent of blood, so if Mr Smith was merely the Culture Secretary’s sacrificial lamb of choice, Jeremy still has every reason to feel hunted.

Ed Miliband has publicly called for Mr Hunt to hop it. “He should resign”, said the Labour leader, “he himself said that his duty was to be transparent, impartial and fair.” The Financial Times report that Jeremy Hunt previously referred to himself as a “cheerleader” for Mr Murdoch’s achievements, on his own website. If so, you can see right through his claims of transparency, and impartiality seems implausible, at best.

It may be that the Culture Secretary’s admiration for the media mogul will pay dividends, however. The headlines which might otherwise have been plotting his demise, are instead reporting the appearance at the Leveson Inquiry of Mr Murdoch himself. When executives from The News of the World appeared before a cross-party select committee in the wake of the phone-hacking scandal, they were accused of collective amnesia. It would seem this unhelpful condition may have been contracted from their boss. Although advanced in years, Mr Murdoch shows no apparent signs of senility, yet has forgotten all manner of details, from conversations with his son, to dinners with Prime Ministers. You would have hoped that at least one of those might have been mildly memorable.

Like all good theatre, an inquiry like this will entertain, and provoke discussion, but in and of itself will rarely change the status quo on which it offers comment. Politics, the press, and indeed the police, are essentially self regulating bodies, and the resulting inquiries from their varied alleged inequities feel like a war of attrition. The length and tedium of the investigation will be directly proportionate to the level of public outrage, and we always give up first. Self regulation is like me asking my three year old to put himself on the naughty step, every time he attacks the cat. It’s a very democratic idea, and as such I would welcome it, but I live in a house with a very nervous cat.              

Grand Prix At Too Great A Price?

Thousands have taken to the streets of Bahrain, as the country plays host to this weekend’s Formula One Grand Prix. Although many have called for its cancellation, it is not so much the race itself to which they object, but the Sunni government that granted the permit. Representing a minority in numbers, they hold the majority of the power, status, and wealth, all of which would be cemented, if not enhanced, by a successful staging of what would be the country’s premier sporting event. Small wonder therefore, that the Crown Prince of Bahrain, Salman bin Hamad Al Khalifa, and Bernie Ecclestone, the crown prince of petrol-heads, have came out in a unified display of commitment to the race, albeit with differing justifications.

Against a backdrop of rising civil unrest, which has seen members of the Force India team ask to go home after they were caught up in the disturbances, the Crown Prince said; “I believe this race is a force for good, it unites many people from many different religious backgrounds.” His comments mark a stark contrast to those of Bahrain’s senior Shia cleric who condemned the crackdown that has accompanied the Grand Prix. The “force for good” will sadly not be witnessed by the many international journalists denied entry to the country to report on the growing tensions.

“It is nothing to do with us what happens in the country,” was the hi-light of Bernie Ecclestone’s amoral musings. The F1 Chief Executive was also quoted as saying it was not “in his power” to call it off. In reality such impotence is likely to be purely self-imposed, as anti-government protests led to last year’s race being cancelled. Alleged human rights abuses continue, according to the banned Bahrain Freedom Movement, claims supported by Amnesty International. Indeed, the Grand Prix itself is likely to coincide with the funeral of a protester allegedly beaten to death by security forces.

Paradoxically, it is the very Grand Prix to which so many of the protesters are opposed, that has proven their unlikely ally. The eyes of the world are again on Bahrain, bringing an international spotlight to internal calls for social and political reform, while attempts to stifle media coverage serve only to sharpen its focus. The Guardian reported a survey carried out for the Bahrain Economic Development Board, which found that 77% of those questioned actually welcomed the Grand Prix. To the governing elite it brings wealth and prestige, to those striving for reform it brings a platform for protest, and to the rest of us the question; if we know the hand signing the cheque has blood on it, should we really be taking the money?

Sincerely "Shocked" of Westminster

 The Chancellor of the Exchequer was apparently “shocked” to learn that many of the UK’s top tier earners pay next to no income tax, but following the findings of an HM Revenue and Customs investigation, George Osborne has been persuaded of the need to “take action”. I have been convinced for years of the need to floss regularly, yet strangely lack the motivation to follow through on my good intentions. Now, whilst it would be churlish to align the deficiencies of my dental hygiene routine with the likelihood of the Chancellor slamming shut a few lascivious loopholes, it might be fair to ask Mr Osborne to quantify the scale of his “shock”. Personally, if some mischief I’d suspected turned out worse than was predicted, I would describe myself more as disappointed, dismayed even. But if I was “shocked” you might conclude that I was either in the wrong job, or lying.

 However, that is me, and I am not the Chancellor. Instead, still no doubt reeling from the “shock”, our gallant hero rides into battle against the malevolent miscreants defrauding the crown of their rightful coppers. But who, I hear you cry, are these merry millionaires? Is it the bankers, the pantomime villain of choice for the muttering many? Or the “non-dom” donors, propping up their parties with one hand on the tiller of a gin palace in San Tropez? Why no! Saint George rides out under the banner of budgetary balancing against pensioners and the charity sector.    

Capping tax relief for charitable donations does not so much fly in the face of the principles behind Big Dave’s Big Society, it’s more of a slap, and the great and the good are queuing up to say so. Certainly, allowing higher rate taxpayers to plough unlimited funding into charitable causes, offsetting the amounts against their tax bills to reduce their payments, does indeed reduce income to the Treasury. However, of all the tax avoidance schemes to choke off, it is one of the few that benefits the country, often guaranteeing the survival of organisations that rely upon donations to maintain the work they do in the community. It seems symptomatic of the frankly bizarre PR deathwish that also saw the 50p tax rate reduced, in a perceived tax cut for millionaires, while pensioners suffered with the abolition of age-related income allowances. Far from slaying dragons, George has become one of his own making. And you don’t have to be a blood hound to catch the scent of u-turn trickling from the Treasury. They are damned if they do of course, and damned if they don’t. But given a choice between being wrong and reforming, or just wrong and resolute, I vote firmly for the former.

The distinction between tax avoidance and evasion, is that one puts you in Parkhurst, the other in Monte Carlo. As the Chancellor points out, there are perfectly legal methods of managing your millions to keep your mitts on most of it, from pension fund over-payments to use of tax havens, or avoiding stamp duty and inheritance tax. The government estimate the annual cost to the treasury is in the region of £5 billion. The real figure is likely to be four times that, or more. To really limit the losses needs legislation, and who better to bring it in that the man who avoided capital gains tax by “flipping” the house he assigned as his second home? The Chancellor may have shot himself firmly in the foot with his first barrage in the battle against tax avoidance, but he may yet win the war, if he really wants to. And if he does, I for one will be “shocked”.

Falklands Revisited

“We’re at war, son” my Dad said, sat on my bed on a bright spring morning in 1982, clearly disappointed that the gravity of his delivery was matched only by the apathy of his offspring’s reaction. But aged nine, with only a cursory awareness of current affairs, or any affairs really, I assumed that unless the Falklands crisis escalated to include food rationing and conscription haircuts, then normal tree climbing activities would continue largely unaffected. As indeed they did.

Thirty years on, with tree climbing sadly a declining element in my daily routine, we face an escalation of tensions between Argentina and Britain again. Several hundred protesters attacked the British embassy in Buenos Aires on Monday evening following a day of events commemorating the 30^th anniversary of the Falklands War, and the 649 Argentine soldiers who lost their lives. President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner described the position of the British over “Las Malvinas” as “absurd”, referring to them as a “colonial enclave”. In turn, David Cameron reaffirmed the nation’s commitment to defending those remote rocks, whose impending oil inspired income may account for some of the ardent Argentine affection for them.

Then, as now, Argentina’s claim over the Falklands is as much a political distraction as an issue of sovereignty. Nothing unites a nation like a rallying call to arms, using patriotism as the Polyfila to smooth out the cracks when confidence or the economy is crumbling. The irony of ’82 was that the desired feel-good factor fell not to the Argentine administration, but the baroness-to-be; Margaret Thatcher. The determined approach of the iron lady won post-war plaudits at home and abroad, the milk-thief made matriarch in a mere 74 days. Battle is the best friend of the bullish and the brazen. Arrogant and inflexible becomes stoical and resolute, just add war and stir. Would a peacetime Churchill have left as impressive a legacy?

This week’s sabre rattling rings hollow however, as Argentina could no more afford an incursion than the UK could muster a taskforce. David Cameron could no doubt do with a little Dunkirk spirit, but 8,000 miles is, I fear, a tad too far for even the most ambitious of Blighty’s fishing boats.

Feral Felons & Forgotten Families

“When people don't feel they have a reason to stay out of trouble, the consequences for communities can be devastating,” the words of Darra Singh, chair of the Riots, Communities and Victims Panel. Established in the wake of last summer’s disturbances, the panel has now published its recommendations, in a week of contrasting examples of social cohesion. Alongside the unified outpouring of support for Bolton midfielder Fabrice Muamba, following his cardiac arrest, we saw the sentencing of those responsible for shooting Thusha Kamaleswaran. A five year old victim of gang rivalries, she will spend the rest of her life in a wheelchair, a symptom, perhaps, of society’s fragile moral fabric seemingly loosening at the seams.

The rioting has been blamed on poor parenting, dwindling youth opportunities, insufficient criminal rehabilitation, and a lack of trust in the police. The socio-political usual suspects to some extent, but the report also raised interesting concerns about materialism, in relation to the widespread looting that accompanied the civil unrest.

 With the highest jobless figures in 17 years, and youth unemployment a particularly potent problem, apathy born of limited options would account for much of the apparent ambivalence towards staying out of trouble. If you don’t have chances to ruin, consequences count for little. The parenting question is equally pivotal. An increasing climate of hopelessness exists in what the report refers to as half a million “forgotten families”. When there is no work ethic to be passed on, just frustration at falling incomes and expectations, small wonder we turn out offspring whose outlook indicates they feel they have nothing to lose.

 “And where were their parents?” Is the cry often quoted, as the latest lay-about is lambasted in the law courts. Who are their parents, might well be more apt. You get what you settle for, in life, work and children. Some are so accustomed to low expectation, they may be surprised to find they can still be disappointed. The geographical and ethnic breakdown of these “forgotten families” will be illuminating. Hopelessness may be impartial, but fatherlessness is a patented part of the programme, in some sections of our multi-cultural melting pot. When even the fundamental responsibilities in life are routinely relinquished, the seeds of delinquency are easily sewn. Popular culture is equally culpable. When your role-models are not the pioneers of industry, but reality show detritus, then the expectation is of affluence for little effort. Against this backdrop, the issue of materialism is poignant and polarising. Are the Porsche and the ipad innocent expressions of success, the motivation to make something of yourself, or the very definition of having done so? If we’re cultivating a community that would sooner wear Cartier in a council house, than old cords in a castle, then risking jail for designer jeans should not appal us at all. 

Justice For Trayvon Martin

Were it not for a growing sense of outcry, it seems unlikely that the US Justice Department would have even launched the investigation, announced today, into the death of 17 year old Trayvon Martin. It is, after all, nearly a month since the unarmed teenager was shot dead in Sanford, Florida, after buying sweets in a local shop. He was alone, carrying nothing more threatening than a mobile phone, bottle of drink and a packet of Skittles. His killer, 28 year old George Zimmerman, was a member of a neighbourhood watch group, and licensed to carry a concealed 9mm automatic pistol.

That the teenager was black, has fuelled public outrage at the authorities’ unwillingness to arrest Zimmerman, raising further questions about racial discrimination within law enforcement communities in America. With support on Twitter from the film director Spike Lee, amongst many others, campaigners have now received assurances of a thorough investigation from the FBI and US Justice Department, after which a spokesman promised that “appropriate action” would be taken.

Issues of race and prejudice will rightly be brought into sharp focus by the killing, which, not being actively challenged by local police, has the feeling of being  sanctioned therefore, by implication. And yet, it would be a wider tragedy still, if the spotlight did not also fall onto an unsettling amendment to Florida’s gun laws, introduced in 2005. Until that time the overriding doctrine was that “a man’s home is his castle”, and he has the right to defend himself within it, but not beyond. But Governor Jeb Bush, brother of guess who, then put his signature to the “Stand Your Ground” law, effectively permitting citizens to defend themselves, with lethal force if necessary, in public places. In addition, the “duty to retreat” principle was abandoned, meaning your friendly neighbourhood vigilante was no longer obliged to back down, in the face of a potential confrontation.

So it was that on the night of February 26^th, George Zimmerman called 911 to report a “real suspicious guy”, saying; “looks like he’s up to no good”. Disregarding the advice of the telephone operator, Zimmerman confronted Martin in a gated development, several residents of which also made calls to the emergency services, alarmed by what they heard. The recently released recordings of those calls clearly feature an unidentified voice screaming in the background, before being silenced by a gunshot. In their refusal to arrest Zimmerman, local police seem to have concluded that the screams did not come from the unarmed young man bringing home some sweets, but from the larger man, with the gun.

Shutting The Afghan Trap.

The good folk of Wikipedia assert that Alexander the Great took three years to “subdue” Afghanistan. That was a little tardy for him, given that he conquered Persia in six months. And given that Persia is now Iran, it seems the foreign policy focus of the developed world has varied little since 300 BC, which should perhaps subdue us all.

The extended Russian sojourn to Afghanistan, sometimes called the Bear Trap, lasted nine years between 1979 and 1989. Soviet sleeves were rolled up to support the Afghan government, so, in a predictable act of Bear-baiting, the US unofficially did the same for the Mujahideen, the guerrilla movement of choice at the time. Former CIA Director Robert Gates claimed the US deliberately provoked Soviet intervention. He said Russia was lured into “a Vietnamese quagmire,” presumably a reference to that other dubious US intervention, not an embarrassing Sat Nav mishap. 

Against this historical backdrop, and the imminent US and UK troop withdrawal from Afghanistan, comes the development that the Russian cabinet is considering allowing NATO to establish a transit hub in the city of Ulyanovsk, 500 miles east of Moscow. Non-lethal cargo would be flown in from Afghanistan, en route to Europe, effectively allowing U.S. troops, amongst others, to set up a logistics facility on Russian territory, for the first time. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, supporting the deal, said: “We are interested in having those who counter issues facing Russia inside Afghanistan do their job efficiently.” If America assisted Russia’s fall into what President Obama's Foreign Policy Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski calls the “Afghan trap”, it is no small irony that Russia may yet help the US out of it. Furthermore, since the serial spending of money and manpower on an Afghan campaign, that is commonly considered unwinnable, is casually called a "trap", one might muse upon the merits of being in it.  

On Day 2 of his visit to Washington, the Prime Minster and the President set aside the burgers and baseball photo ops to focus, like so many before them, on issues dominated by Afghanistan. Both leaders have cautioned against a “rush to the exits”, but would such stampede stalling be to save lives or save face? David Cameron has boldly declared that Afghanistan must never again be allowed to exist as a safe haven for the Taliban, as the troops quietly back their bags in the background. Whether they leave with a bang or a whimper, the plan is for last boots home by the end of 2014, presumably leaving democracy developing and the Taliban totally trounced. Or possibly, just a little subdued.