spinoff - news

Burning Bush

noreply@blogspirit.com (spinoff) — Wed, 11 Jul 2007 16:26:32 +0200

So finally – at long last – it seems that George W. Bush’s wheels are falling off. The forces of reason, dormant for so long within the Republican party, have started to wake. They have rubbed their eyes, noticed the catastrophic disaster that has beset the United States in Iraq and have spoken out against the party line.

But though in immanent danger of complete political collapse, one must not underestimate Bush, or more specifically his quite awesome propaganda wing (the word propaganda is appropriate here). Some of the PR twists executed by the Karl Rove machine have been quite jaw-dropping in their audacity and ambition. Has there ever been a more brilliantly-fudged piece of logic than: “we were attacked by a Saudi Arabian currently hiding in Afghanistan. Therefore, we must attack Iraq”?

One must also not underestimate the capacity for self-delusion. Yesterday, George W. Bush stood up and with a straight face told a crowd: “I want to tell you, yes, we can accomplish this fight and win in Iraq. And secondly, I want to tell you, we must, for the sake of our children and grandchildren.” The rhetoric has not changed. Perhaps that is the nature of the rhetorician – if one is the sum of one’s words, then those words must be consistent and therefore one cannot change tack.

One must not underestimate Bush – he still has potent weapons at his disposal. Nor should one underestimate the awfulness of the situation in which he now finds himself. Everything is turning against him: high-profile defections over Iraq have hurt his party; his most loyal ally has left Number 10 Downing Street, to be replaced by some guy who refuses even to use the phrase “War on Terror” and his popularity rating is at an all-time low.

So bad is his situation that the anxious President has even started meeting religious leaders and historians to discuss his legacy. One can imagine the question “how will they remember me, fellas?” being met by silence, broken only by the noise of uncomfortable squirming in Oval office chairs.

And so now he sits – to borrow a phrase – in office but not in power. The war has him in a horrific embrace from which he cannot extricate himself. He cannot continue with the same strategy because it will mean more deaths, more stagnation, more loss of international standing and more damage to the Republican party.

But on the other hand he cannot change course and bring troops home because to do so would be to rubbish the entire basis of his Iraq foray, to admit incompetence, to imply that the last two years have been a waste of time, money and worst of all US troops’ lives and to leave Iraq wide open as a playground for the Iranians, the Wahhabists, the bombers, the Shia death squads and civil war.

George W. Bush can go neither forward, nor back. He can neither advance nor retreat. He can neither effect a political nor a military solution. He is losing the support of his own party having long ago lost the support of both the wider US polity, the electorate, the domestic and global media and the rest of the world.

And there he stands, frozen and with no options left to him, other than to bicker with the increasing numbers of people who point out his egregious failures. Now his only hope is that news reports that start with paragraphs such as:

“U.S. counterterror officials are warning of an increased risk of an attack this summer, given Al Qaeda's apparent interest in summertime strikes and increased Al Qaeda training in the Afghan-Pakistani border region.”

will be sufficient to maintain the illusion that the United States is fighting Al-Qaeda on the streets of Baghdad. Certainly there is an Al-Qaeda presence in Iraq, but what is absolutely clear is that United States and UK forces are spending the majority of their time engaged as third parties in a sectarian civil war between Shia and Sunni insurgents. The truck bomb that killed 150 people in a Baghdad marketplace this weekend was not the work of Al-Qaeda, but Sunni militiamen. US troops have been reduced to playing the role of a police force.

This situation is of Bush’s own making. Iraq – like all his foreign policy moves – has been a catastrophic disaster. He was outmaneuvered by the revolting North Korean junta, which despite US efforts still got its bomb (any solution there will come as a result of Chinese intervention). He is currently being bested by Iran (undoubtedly the out and out winner in the whole Iraq fiasco. One must pray that Bush’s frustration does not lead to his authorizing a strike against Iranian nuclear facilities at Natanz).

At home he has been just as destructive. He has spent the US deficit and subjected the economy to a huge surge in debt, and the absence of a dollar crash has been nothing short of a miracle. He has embraced China as a trade partner, again entwining the US in a relationship that it cannot afford to exit, in this case because the US is now hooked on the deflationary effect of cheap imported Chinese goods. So long as this relationship continues, the export deficit will continue to grow to dizzying levels and the US will become increasingly unable to force the revaluation of the Renminbi which would offset, though only slightly, the effects of this growing trade imbalance. Here, again, Bush cannot act.

He also cannot act on illegal immigration, a totemic issue for the right of his party, which wants a wall along the southern border to keep immigrant Mexicans out. But again, the overheated economy requires cheap migrant labour because Americans are unwilling to take on the low paid manual agricultural work required during the harvest season. Higher input prices for farmers would be passed on to consumers, causing upward inflationary pressure. Bush wants a border wall, but realizes he cannot have one.

The inappropriately small force deployed in Afghanistan; the mismanagement of the Iraq war; the dissolution of global support for the US; the cack-handed dealings with North Korea; the rise of Iran; the fragility of the US economy; the forced departures of Donald Rumsfeld, secretary of defence, and of George Tenet, director of the C.I.A.; the Lewis ‘Scooter’ Libby trial; the creation of a gulag in Cuba – the overriding picture that develops when considering the defining elements of the Bush presidency is of a man who simply has not understood the world around him.

If one were to be cruel, one might say that he suffered from an inability to interpret events and situations in ways that deviated from a highly restrictive philosophy, which was born of a Damascene conversion to evangelical Christianity after a prolonged period of alcoholism. Seen in this light, Bush was mentally restricted from the start and, as such, utterly inappropriate as a leader.

The cruel irony is that the most grotesque failure – Iraq – was not entirely Bush's fault. It wasn’t. Left wingers argue that Bush cruelly pursues some unspoken agenda on behalf of big business, big oil, or some such. Crazed, extreme left wingers think Bush arranged 9/11 to give an excuse to attack Iraq. They are just as foolish as their counterparts on the extreme right who claim Bush was a force for moral re-armament, for justice, truth and so on.

Just as foolish are the Jihadist, anti-Americans, who claim Bush invaded Muslim soil because he wanted to destroy Islam and steal the region’s oil. The first part of that statement is merely extremist propaganda, and the second half economic nonsense – if the US wants oil, it buys it. It has already spent $700bn on the war, an amount it can never hope to recoup from Iraqi oil sales. The ‘war for oil’ theory is an economic nonsense.

The Iraq war was waged for the best of reasons. Assessed objectively, Bush stands for values which seem reasonable: be good; encourage other people to be good; spread democracy and so on. Bush had good intentions. He also has a reputation for being an affable, humourous and persuasive individual, capable of charming both large audiences, as well as individuals.

He also had a crisis with which to deal. He stepped up and faced the test. We can now say without fear of contradiction, that he has failed it, catastrophically.

Yours etc.,

Spinoff.

Scotland the buggered

noreply@blogspirit.com (spinoff) — Thu, 26 Apr 2007 10:47:04 +0200

What the bugger is happening in Scotland and furthremore, does anybody out there care? I can only say that coverage in national papers amounts to a press blackout (a blackout similar in its 'black-ness' and its 'out-ness' to that which keeps a certain gentlemans’ sexual proclivities concealed from view). The Scottish blackout is not fair.

Did I miss the meeting where it was deemed ‘not in the public interest’ whether or not Labour hangs on to its raggedy hold on what’s going on, or whether control is wrested out of their hands? Aaahhh - the clamouring SNP: a party so committed to independence ‘lite’ that, were it not for the familiar pasty face of Salmond gracing their literature, they would have trouble convincing anyone they weren’t just doing what the Tories are doing in England, i.e writing in big round letters ‘WE ARE NOT LABOUR’ and hoping someone walks past and takes notice.

And what’s going on with the Lib Dems? Would they really consider power-sharing with a bunch of people they have widely denounced as complete buffoons? Maybe they’re thinking, as Blair did with the US, that if they’re along for the ride they might be able to temper some of the nuttiness (because that worked a treat now, didn’t it?).

And the Conservative Party? Isn’t their one member just sitting tight and waiting to scoop up votes from those who can’t face voting any other way? Good plan my man: I’ll be rooting for you (patting lonely Tory on head and handing him a community landgrab to play with).

Either way if the whole country goes to hell in a handcart it’s the English who will suffer: from an influx of loudly swearing economic migrants to a cheap booze drought, the repercussions of ignoring Scotland’s fate will not be slight. Mark my words.

Yours etc.,

Spinoff.

Cricket balls

noreply@blogspirit.com (spinoff) — Tue, 27 Mar 2007 17:50:00 +0200

In a flash, the death of Mr Woolmer, the coach of the Pakistan Cricket team was blamed on elements within the Pakistan team itself. Former Pakistan players and those associated with the current team were passing through London on their way back home from the Caribbean and last night’s television news carried interviews with members of the Pakistan entourage. But how unfairly these men were treated.

Almost all of the interviews held – most egregiously that which appeared on BBC’s Newsnight – made an unacceptable assumption, and it was this: that Mr. Woolmer’s death was due to match fixing; that match fixing is impossible without the assistance of the team; and that the Pakistan team was therefore complicit in Mr. Woolmer’s death. This is nonsense.

The first assumption is that Bob Woolmer was writing a book in which he was planning to reveal highly-damaging secrets about match fixing in the Pakistan game. For this, he was killed. This rumour was thrown at last night’s interviewees who dismissed it unreservedly.

But this rumour is exactly that – a rumour. It also happens to be a false one. The book’s co-author has repeatedly stated that the Woolmer book was intended to be a technical manual – nothing further. But this has not stopped the rumour mill. The next phase of the rumour is that those involved in match fixing thought that Woolmer was going to reveal them to the authorities, and that suspicion alone was reason enough to target Woolmer, and kill him.

But consider this question – if Pakistani gangsters wished to murder Bob Woolmer, coach of Pakistan, then where would they chose to carry out that plan? Would they do so when he was in Pakistan? Or would they wait until he was at one of the most televised and high-profile sporting competitions on the planet, surrounded by security employees, staying in a heavily guarded hotel on the same high security floor as Brian Lara, the West Indies Captain (a special pass is required even to access that floor), in a hotel full of closed circuit television cameras?

Furthermore, the Caribbean is a notoriously difficult place to visit for the greater part of the world’s nations. There are regular direct flights between northern Europe, the United States and the Caribbean because those regions are home to such a great proportion of the Caribbean diaspora. Not so Pakistan.

So not only is the Caribbean exceptionally dangerous and ill-suited to the type of international assassination implied by last night’s pundits, it is also incredibly difficult to access from South Asia. It is grossly improbable that a book-making syndicate would send a killer on a journey that involved having to change planes in terrorism-obsessed London.

There are many more probable reasons for Mr Woolmer’s death than that an international conspiracy of book-makers wanted to silence him for fear of exposure. Which is not to say that Pakistan – and India also – does not have a grievous problem with book-making and sports.

There is no question that illegal bookmakers have attempted to fix matches and worm their way into the fabric of South Asian cricket. And the most fundamental reason that such a problem exists is a very simple one – gambling is illegal in both Pakistan and India. What better way can one imagine to line the pockets of sub-continental gangsters? What better way to cement the relationship between a sport and the criminal underground? Those governments must review their domestic policies.

There is gangsterism, and there are compromised players in the Pakistan game, just as there are compromised players in the Indian, Sri Lankan, South African, Australian and English games. But no Pakistan player or betting syndicate has had anything to do with Mr Woolmer’s death.

Yours etc.,

Spinoff.

Number crunch

noreply@blogspirit.com (spinoff) — Tue, 09 Jan 2007 11:40:26 +0100

What will happen when Mr Bush sends a further 30,000 troops to Iraq? And does anyone else out there suspect that this is a question which Mr Bush himself has not even asked himself?

Mr Bush is a capitalist. There is nothing wrong with being a capitalist. All here at Spinoff Towers are capitalists – proud capitalists – and would have it no other way (hate Socialists). But crucially, we here at Spinoff Towers are not defined by the “capitalist” moniker. Mr Bush, however – along with those of his inner circle – very much is.

Like his inner coterie, George’s has been the career of the big businessman. He has drilled for oil, owned an American Football team, owned prospecting companies, sat on boards of directors, and so on. After all, back in the day who better to have sitting on the board of your company than the then President’s son?

The crucial thing about such men as this is that they develop a fascination with big numbers. The reason for this is that big numbers in the business world more often than not are synonymous with success. Look at the balance sheet, bottom right-hand corner – what do you see? Big number, or small? Hmm? A big one? Woopy-doo – bonus time for the board! Small one? Uh-oh.

This law of big numbers has been transposed into the military arena and in the humming Bush cortex now becomes: we are not having success; success is big numbers; send big number of troops.

The current strategy is failing. It has failed. It’s a failure. Everything about this war has had a big F stamped on it. To pursue this same course, but on a bigger scale, is idiocy. If you do that, you don’t get success. You just get an even bigger failure.

It is hard to see Mr Bush resisting the big time.

Yours etc.,

Spinoff.

Some thoughts on strangling the BBC

noreply@blogspirit.com (spinoff) — Fri, 22 Dec 2006 12:16:49 +0100

Ho ho! ‘Tis the season to be jolly, the season of good will, of gifts, generosity and of shafting the BBC over its licence fee. Gather round for the singing, the mulled wine and the below-inflation funding over the next five years. Ho ho ho!

Dashed unfortunate for the BBC, I suppose. Poor BBC. We at Spinoff, while recognising the inefficiency of the Beeb – its Byzantine structure, misguided foray into ratings-based, rather than public service-based programming – still love both it and the idea of having a public service broadcaster removed from the commercial exigencies suffered by other channels. We love the fact that we alone in the UK are able to watch TV channels and listen to radio stations that aren’t spoiled by adverts. The BBC stands as an uncommercial oasis in a commoditised world.

And now the Govt. are going to curb the BBC’s pocket money. Gordon Brown and Tessa Jowell concocted the rate cut equivalent to a 0.45% drop in funding each year. The Beeb is desperately trying to negotiate something more favourable.

There are several reasons why G.Brown has put his name to so sensitive a decision. The first is that he really doesn’t have all that much money at the moment. We hear all sorts of Tory flatulence about how “the public finances are in a mess”, and when one sees the Chancellor scrabbling around for cash – bonking the Beeb on the head and nicking its dinner money like this – well, one is inclined to suspect that something out-of-the-ordinary must be afoot with the village accounts.

The second reason is more cynical still and it is this – that the BBC has permanently blotted its copybook with the government over the 45 minutes / illegal war / dead weapons inspector rumpus, and that Gordon has decided to crack down on them as hard as poss. in order to cement the master/servant dynamic in place before his bid for glory next year.

And Gordon is, to a certain extent confined to this sort of tactic by dint of his personality. Over these last ten-or-so excruciatingly painful years, he has seen his partner in crime T.Blair win the media over with oodles of charm, warmth and so on, all the while knowing that he himself has no such charm. Let us not beat around the bush here – Gordon has, quite frankly, all the interpersonal skills of the Cairngorms.

But just because he is blessed with a demeanour that makes a deep freeze seem as warm and as welcoming as a week in the Bahamas, that doesn’t mean to say that Gordon can’t win over the media. No sir. He will win them over. Absolutely. It’s just that he’ll use a different method to our Tone. It will involve “carrying on the war by other means”.

And in this case, those other means are financial. Squeeze the buggers. Cut off their money. Twist their tails. Get them involved in a fight with us that they can’t afford to lose, and which will involve them sucking up to us and not the other way round. The Blairite smarm-machine has been replaced by the Brownite purse strings garrotte and the BBC is the first victim to feel the tightening about its throat. He withholds money now but dangles the carrot of a renegotiable increase of up to 2% in 2012 – is the Beeb therefore more or less likely to be “on side” when Gordon runs for P.M.?

And the third reason is the most cynical of them all, and can be summarised in one word. “Murdoch”. (Should be fairly obvious where this one is going, so will make it brief). Before he got into power, Blair assured Murdoch that he would not fiddle with the UK’s media ownership laws, or in any way attempt to trigger a break-up of the News Corp. empire. He stuck to this promise, and in fact loosened media ownership laws, which has recently allowed Murdoch to buy a large chunk of ITV (depressing days indeed).

Moral of the story is therefore: “you want be elected P.M., you got make Rupert happy”. This Gordon has recognised, and this Gordon is attempting to do. Murdoch HATES the BBC. It is everything that he hates: it’s leftie, non market-driven, subsidised by the state, not for sale. God he hates it. The sight of Gordon Brown chipping away at this smug, liberal media henge in the middle of the thrusting, ad-driven whirlpool will indicate to R.M in no uncertain terms that indeed, this is a chap who seems to have the right ideas.

So this is our prime minister in waiting: taking money from the public broadcaster to plug gaps in the national balance sheet; chipping away at the BBC to scare them into submission; falling head over heels in order to please an un-elected, un-accountable oligarch who controls the majority of the UK’s news flow.

Merry Christmas everyone.

Yours etc.,

Spinoff.

Beyond good and evil

noreply@blogspirit.com (spinoff) — Wed, 06 Dec 2006 19:30:00 +0100

Mr. Baker and the Iraq Study Group’s (ISG) report on the situation in Iraq marks a turning point. If his recommendations are taken up, the Iraq project will have been profoundly transformed for the better.

Mr. Baker has recommended: engagement in the Israel Palestine situation; engagement with Iran; engagement with Syria; a drawdown of troops from Iraq. These suggestions differ absolutely from the approach pursued so far by the George W. Bush White House.

Though the report by the ISG has been hotly anticipated, its contents have been no real secret – strategic leaks have seen to that. Often during the Iraq war it seems that politicians have approached Iraq with fully-formed and unshakable conclusions already in mind. Not so Mr Baker. His suggestions are born of nothing other than dry reason.

This is in sharp contrast to George W. Bush, and to the mindset that he engenders. For the President has a perfectly-formed world view. Perfectly-formed world views are complete. There is no room for alteration. Such mental states do not allow, indeed cannot allow, any deviation from a rigidly formed outlook on the world. In the case of George W. Bush, this rigidity is a consequence of a starkly moral world view. This view has proved fatal.

At root, the U.S. neo-conservative credo is a moral one. At its base stands one simple moral judgement and it is this: “the U.S. is good”. Certainly, such an assumption is uncontroversial. The U.S. has done great things and contributed much via its rich culture, its financial institutions and so on. In one sense of the word, the U.S. is certainly “good”.

But there is of course another application of that word, one that stems from the American exceptionalist view that the U.S. is not only culturally, practically and materially beneficial, but is also morally good. When combined with the fact that the U.S. is the lone super power, the neo-con conclusion is this – that there is a moral obligation for the U.S. to use its strength in order to transmit “good”.

The Iraq war is a manifestation of this attempt at transmission. A small, highly mobile and technologised U.S. force was deployed to: liberate, free, bring democracy, fight the forces of terror in Iraq. The idea of the small and surgical U.S. army force was envisioned, specifically by Secretary of Defence Donald Rumsfeld (who still technically retains that post until his successor is confirmed) as the perfect neo-con foreign policy tool – the ideal moralistic army, small, able to penetrate a country quickly and with the minimum of casualties, and then depose the undesired leadership, replacing it with a U.S.-friendly government.

But a moral view of the world necessarily prohibits giving any quarter to “the bad”. The effect of this is to limit one’s choice of potential allies. There can be no half way – either “the bad” is made “good” or an attitude of aggression must be struck. The world is therefore cast sharply into two camps: “you are either with us, or you are against us.” This binary view is extremely potent for two reasons, firstly because of its extreme simplicity and secondly, its emotional basis.

But a moral view of the world is both practicably useless, and philosophically anachronistic, and in political terms, the urge to act solely on perceived moral grounds is highly restrictive. Neo-conservatives – the current White House administration – are thusly restricted. As a result they have been unable to speak to Syria. They cannot negotiate with Hamas. They cannot talk to the Iranian government. They will not see Shia clerics or leaders of the insurgency. (They also could not talk to the North Koreans. The result? Disaster.)

But now we have Mr Baker. We also have his report. For the first time, in connection with the war, leading U.S. voices are making statements such as: “Our political leaders must build a bipartisan approach to bring a responsible conclusion to what is now a lengthy and costly war”.

Implicit in this statement is a refutation of the most fundamental bases upon which the case for this war was constructed. Mr. Baker has no political career to protect. He is not running for office. He is disinterested and rational.

We must hope that this voice of political reason is capable of drowning out the self-destructive moralists whose fictional and overly-simplistic view of the world has prevailed so far with such catastrophic results.

Yours etc.,

Spinoff.

Sack my cook

noreply@blogspirit.com (spinoff) — Wed, 11 Oct 2006 14:52:22 +0200

Thought for the day: despite what some would have you believe, there is nothing - not one tiny little thing - that is either hard, clever or big about cooking in expensive restaurants, no matter what the Hun Ramsey would have you believe.

Like M.P.White, Ramsey has recently published an autobiography which, like his odious TV programme, revels in his considerable capacity for bullying, swearing and cooking people's tea.

Why is this man celebrated? His rebarbative brand of aggression, blue language and hideous appearance are three things that modern society abhors - so why does he remain popular? And who on god's good earth does he imagine will want to read a book dealing with the subject?

Do we want to read 400 pages of: "Monday - got up, ruined someone's day by swearing, bullied someone else, beat someone up and then made a fruit pavlova"?

No sireebob. Celebrity chefs who revel in machismo are amongst the most laughable entities ever to walk the face of the earth. We must laugh at them, long, hard and often.

Yours etc.,

Spinoff.

Let them eat...er...

noreply@blogspirit.com (spinoff) — Wed, 04 Oct 2006 17:43:27 +0200

Interesting to see Boris getting bonked over the head with the media frying pan for his outburst of Jamie Oliver-themed apostasy. Interesting to see also the way in which the Tory Pary – in the full flush of conference – dealt with it.

In the end, it was dealt with in the “chuh! Boris, eh?” manner which was probably the right one. As an original and an eccentric, Boris was allowed some leeway.

And it was this sudden leakage of character that set this Spinoffite thinking – politics… character… hmm.

Because there have not been any, have there? Politicians with character, that is. Not recently anyway, and certainly not in the Labour party.

Sure, there will be dead-eyed Labourite apparatchiks in the Blair and Brown bunkers who will shoot forth a jet of hagiographic guff concerning their man at the drop of a hat.

The toe-curling leaked Blair aide memo shows the extent to which, amongst his own, Blair is worshipped as some sort of a god. But among the wider population? Not a bit of it.

So we at Spinoff, though by no means Tories, welcome Boris J. We feel that he brings humour, character and warmth to the political table, qualities that the New Labour machine seems at times almost specifically designed to crush.

Yours etc.,

Spinoff.

Brownian motion

noreply@blogspirit.com (spinoff) — Mon, 25 Sep 2006 15:16:59 +0200

Yes - there wasn't a great fluidity, was there? About Mr G.Brown's speech today. At conference. The voice is solid yes, but he's got no real sense of phrasing or timing. And he didn't say a word about Iraq. Or Afghanistan. Or Iran. Or Palestine. Or Trident. Or the NHS strikes. Or the pensions black hole. Or anything.

Soundwise, it worked well-ish as a Credo; a crie de coeur in the Presbyterian / humanist mould, setting out a craggy-faced, wind-swept vision of chilly-thighed, freshly-starched Brownite leadership - all "neeps and tatties with pastor Brown in the grey, stone rectory", washed down with strong, bad tea and then in the morning crisp, cold white clothes laid out on the bed by a disapproving, black-clad mother, who glowers at the suspicious stains on the eiderdown before thrashing you down the street to school, and to hours of Calvin and Erasmus on hard benches.

And in that moment I found myself thinking "fuck that".

Yours etc.,

Spinoff.

The love of power

noreply@blogspirit.com (spinoff) — Thu, 07 Sep 2006 11:15:00 +0200

The idiotic power struggle currently paralysing the Labour party provides not only an interesting glimpse into the psyche of the political animal, but also re-enforces the argument in favour of an unelected second chamber.

The reason is this – to become a politician, one has to be attracted to the job. One does not become a politician by accident. There are those that are attracted by the prospect of doing good works, joining committees and so on and so forth. These, however, are the politicians that are rarely seen. They eschew the limelight in favour of dark, industrious corners.

But then there is the other, much more famous animal, the political star, and it is this animal that is most significant and telling. This type of politician is drawn to the political flame not by the thought of being able to help, but by the promise of power. Quite how attractive this breed finds power is currently being demonstrated with shocking clarity by T.Blair’s pathological inability to cede power (just as, before him, Mrs Thatcher demonstrated the exact same trait). God, he loves it.

For despite the media storm, paralysed party, growing Tory threat, and despite the fact that neither his party nor the country want him in power any more, idiotic foreign policy and ongoing wars that he cannot attend to for political strife at home – despite all these things, he clings to power. He clings to power because his life and career – and indeed his entire reason for being – are predicated on it.

And this brings us to the unelected second chamber, and to a question. Consider this: do we want to be governed exclusively by individuals such as Blair, who are motivated by power? Because if an individual is so concerned with power when in fact he or she ought to be concerned with the wellbeing of the country, then that individual is surely undesirable as a leader.

The principle concern ought not to be for the maintenance of personal position because, as we see with Blair, a fixation with the ins and outs of staying on the throne can bring government business to a complete standstill.

And this is why an unelected second chamber is so vital. The Commons is filled with and led by a group of men and women fixated with power. What could be better than a second chamber to keep them in check, peopled by individuals who do not share this fixation? What better way to hold back the aspirant megalomaniac tendency inherent in the Blair / Thatcher-style political animal than to dilute their juice with individuals who have come to power by accident (for what could possibly be more accidental than birth?)

So bring back the Dukes, Earls and Honourable Ladies to blockade the way of the thrusting plebs with their stiltony, tweedy reasonableness! All these people who actively seek power and then blub when they have it taken away are too sick-making for words. Yuk.

Yours etc.,

Spinoff.