Well hurrah for the army. As the bleeding heart liberals wring their hands at the way the military deposed the 'democratically elected' Mr Morsi (he actually got only 25% of the votes of those eligible to vote) I rejoice and open the champagne. The army, quite correctly, have gone in hard and not pussy footed about. If a things worth doing it's worth doing properly and getting rid of Mr Morsi and his Muslim Brotherhood government was certainly something worth doing. Egypt, under the so called 'moderate' Morsi was heading down the road to becoming a Muslim 'theocracy.' His government had already started openly encouraging violence against Egypt's 8 million Christians as well as other Muslim minorities who it disapproved off.
I also have a shrewd suspicion that Mr Morsi and his friends where already giving much thought to ways to hang on to power without going through the tedious process of having to present themselves for re election, no doubt taking lessons from the history of most Communist and African dictatorships who managed to survive many years on the principle of one man one vote once. They might even have been talking to the current President of Turkey who is also an Islamist and has taken the precaution of purging his army and imprisoning many generals on trumped up charges. This particular 'champion of democarcy' said once: 'Democarcy is like a train- you get off it when you get to yours station' a view I suspect that Mr Morsi would have endorsed.
Wednesday, 28 August 2013
Tuesday, 6 August 2013
CASH FOR PEERAGES
Hostess: It's a great secret, but I must tell you. My husband has been offered a peerage.
Guest: Really! That's rather interesting. We thought of having one, but they are so expensive, and we are economising just now .
The above from Punch in 1921. Out of the thirty new peers created several seemed to lack merit except in so far as they have made substantial financial contributions to political parties. James Palumbo, the night club owner, promotion to the ermine looked particularly dodgy. He has given, it is true, more than £500,000 to the Liberal Party but it is difficult to think what other qualities he has which would justify his joining the House of Lords. There is, of course, nothing new about cash for peerages. The Liberal Party in particular has form on this subject as Lloyd George pretty well financed his party by selling knighthoods, baronetcies and peerages. The going rate then (1920) for a knighthood being £10,000 while a baronetcy would cost about £40,000 and, one suspects a peerage well over a £100,000, multiply by around 100 to get to modern day values.
Then of course there where no such thing as 'Life Peers' whilst now there is no such thing as a hereditary peerage or even a baronetcy on offer so one cannot directly compare the cost of getting a peerage say in 1920 to the cost of getting one now. However for those considering investing in a political party with a view to achieving ennoblement it does appear that the wise man should give money to the Liberal party. With a little bit of greasing it would seem that something between £500,000/£1.0m should, after a decent interval, do the trick. Conservative and Labour peerages though seem, anyway from the current list, to be considerably more expensive while, frankly, giving money to UKIP looks a lost cause as the main political parties are making quite sure that they have no nominations - odd that - is the Liberal Party that same one which used to bleat at how unfair our system was - strange they are so silent about the effective disenfranchisement from the House of Lords of some 15% of the electorate.
Guest: Really! That's rather interesting. We thought of having one, but they are so expensive, and we are economising just now .
The above from Punch in 1921. Out of the thirty new peers created several seemed to lack merit except in so far as they have made substantial financial contributions to political parties. James Palumbo, the night club owner, promotion to the ermine looked particularly dodgy. He has given, it is true, more than £500,000 to the Liberal Party but it is difficult to think what other qualities he has which would justify his joining the House of Lords. There is, of course, nothing new about cash for peerages. The Liberal Party in particular has form on this subject as Lloyd George pretty well financed his party by selling knighthoods, baronetcies and peerages. The going rate then (1920) for a knighthood being £10,000 while a baronetcy would cost about £40,000 and, one suspects a peerage well over a £100,000, multiply by around 100 to get to modern day values.
Then of course there where no such thing as 'Life Peers' whilst now there is no such thing as a hereditary peerage or even a baronetcy on offer so one cannot directly compare the cost of getting a peerage say in 1920 to the cost of getting one now. However for those considering investing in a political party with a view to achieving ennoblement it does appear that the wise man should give money to the Liberal party. With a little bit of greasing it would seem that something between £500,000/£1.0m should, after a decent interval, do the trick. Conservative and Labour peerages though seem, anyway from the current list, to be considerably more expensive while, frankly, giving money to UKIP looks a lost cause as the main political parties are making quite sure that they have no nominations - odd that - is the Liberal Party that same one which used to bleat at how unfair our system was - strange they are so silent about the effective disenfranchisement from the House of Lords of some 15% of the electorate.
Monday, 29 July 2013
London House Prices 2
A friend casually said; 'My cleaners looking to buy a flat in Fulham '
Me: 'Your CLEANER! I mean - a one bedroom flat in Fulham is going to set her back at least £500,000!
Friend: ' I know - but she owns a £1 .5 million house in Wandsworth'
London house prices are now surreal. The boom goes on and is now at the stage when even normally sensible people are charging in - convinced they must get on the London property ladder somehow - however low and squalid the rung -otherwise their children will never ever be able to afford to live and work in London.
London property is a BUBBLE. But - as with any bubble - it is very difficult to say -with any accuracy (a) How big the BUBBLE will inflate to or (b) when the BUBBLE will burst. But burst it will because it has to. Wages in London have not risen for the last five years -yet property prices have soared - ergo the poor London workers are being squeezed with more and more of their salaries being used to pay for somewhere to sleep at night. A scruffy room in a flat in a not that smart area of London is now £200 a week plus or around £12,000 a year.
My children will - I am afraid - have to put up with renting such scruffy rooms as I am not going to buy them a flat at these silly prices -but others are - I walked into a friends picture gallery recently and saw a gorgeous 17th century portrait of a boy with his dog and gun by a man called Closterman. It was being sold - my friend told me - as the owner wished to buy his son a flat in London.
Well my pictures are staying firmly on the walls - boom come and booms go - and my portraits of my ancestors have witnessed many - and will witness many more I hope before some stupid descendant pops them in Sotheby's to try and make a fast buck.
Me: 'Your CLEANER! I mean - a one bedroom flat in Fulham is going to set her back at least £500,000!
Friend: ' I know - but she owns a £1 .5 million house in Wandsworth'
London house prices are now surreal. The boom goes on and is now at the stage when even normally sensible people are charging in - convinced they must get on the London property ladder somehow - however low and squalid the rung -otherwise their children will never ever be able to afford to live and work in London.
London property is a BUBBLE. But - as with any bubble - it is very difficult to say -with any accuracy (a) How big the BUBBLE will inflate to or (b) when the BUBBLE will burst. But burst it will because it has to. Wages in London have not risen for the last five years -yet property prices have soared - ergo the poor London workers are being squeezed with more and more of their salaries being used to pay for somewhere to sleep at night. A scruffy room in a flat in a not that smart area of London is now £200 a week plus or around £12,000 a year.
My children will - I am afraid - have to put up with renting such scruffy rooms as I am not going to buy them a flat at these silly prices -but others are - I walked into a friends picture gallery recently and saw a gorgeous 17th century portrait of a boy with his dog and gun by a man called Closterman. It was being sold - my friend told me - as the owner wished to buy his son a flat in London.
Well my pictures are staying firmly on the walls - boom come and booms go - and my portraits of my ancestors have witnessed many - and will witness many more I hope before some stupid descendant pops them in Sotheby's to try and make a fast buck.
Friday, 26 July 2013
Royal Society for the Protection of Birds - a racist charity?
The COE of the RSPB recently sent a letter to the Guardian railing against the granting of two licenses by Natural England which allowed for the removal on one estate of four buzzard nests and, on a poultry farm, for five birds to be trapped and relocated - note - neither of these licenses allowed ANY birds to be killed. So why then did Mike Clarke state in his letter to the Guardian that; ' .....licenses have been granted to kill or capture adult birds?' What he wrote was demonstrably untrue as he well knew - i.e. in plain language he - the Chief Executive of a major conservation charity - lied. Now as charities can claim back tax paid on donations from the Exchequer the RSPB is in fact part funded by all taxpayers -is it right that a part tax payer funded body should employ a liar as COE and should not the Charity Commission take the RSPB to task for lying? I only ask.
Ok - you say - so he is a liar - but how does that make the RSPB racist? Well -one would assume - that an organisation called the RSPB would be interested in the welfare of ALL birds and not favour one breed of birds over others? Increasingly though - over the last twenty or so years - the RSPB has tended to favour raptors over all else. Now back in the sixties raptors - that is all types of hawk - were seriously endangered for various reasons - the use of DDT being a primary one. Since those days though raptor numbers have recovered and now birds such as buzzards are thriving. . The problem - conveniently always ignored by the RSPB - is that raptors are just that -raptors. They live by killing other birds and mammals. The famous incident some years back when an ornithologist in Cornwall was delighted when a small bird alighted in front of his hide, which he recognised as a native from North America, it had somehow made the enormous journey across the Atlantic unscathed. He started photographing the bird when - suddenly - a buzzard swooped down and killed it.
The fact is that raptors kill other birds - not just game birds or free range poultry but all birds. Nature is not cuddly - as wildlife charities like to pretend - but red blooded and cruel. Just because a buzzard is a spectacular bird while a fox is a mammal does not mean that it should be immune from being controlled just as the fox is controlled.
Incidentally - talking of control of mammals and protection of birds - it would be interesting to hear the RSPB's views on culling badgers. Everyone knows that one of the major reasons for the catastrophic decline in the population of all ground nesting birds is the increase in the badger population but the RSPB remains discretely silent on the matter of badgers as - of course - they are cuddly and therefor off limits to a charity which survives on donations from a gullible and ignorant public.
Ok - you say - so he is a liar - but how does that make the RSPB racist? Well -one would assume - that an organisation called the RSPB would be interested in the welfare of ALL birds and not favour one breed of birds over others? Increasingly though - over the last twenty or so years - the RSPB has tended to favour raptors over all else. Now back in the sixties raptors - that is all types of hawk - were seriously endangered for various reasons - the use of DDT being a primary one. Since those days though raptor numbers have recovered and now birds such as buzzards are thriving. . The problem - conveniently always ignored by the RSPB - is that raptors are just that -raptors. They live by killing other birds and mammals. The famous incident some years back when an ornithologist in Cornwall was delighted when a small bird alighted in front of his hide, which he recognised as a native from North America, it had somehow made the enormous journey across the Atlantic unscathed. He started photographing the bird when - suddenly - a buzzard swooped down and killed it.
The fact is that raptors kill other birds - not just game birds or free range poultry but all birds. Nature is not cuddly - as wildlife charities like to pretend - but red blooded and cruel. Just because a buzzard is a spectacular bird while a fox is a mammal does not mean that it should be immune from being controlled just as the fox is controlled.
Incidentally - talking of control of mammals and protection of birds - it would be interesting to hear the RSPB's views on culling badgers. Everyone knows that one of the major reasons for the catastrophic decline in the population of all ground nesting birds is the increase in the badger population but the RSPB remains discretely silent on the matter of badgers as - of course - they are cuddly and therefor off limits to a charity which survives on donations from a gullible and ignorant public.
Monday, 10 June 2013
The Nazis were Germans
In other words it is rubbish. The vast majority of German people were in favour of the war in 1939 even if they weren't in the Nazi party - the vast majority of the German armed forces were not party members. The vast majority of the German people were, in 1940, intoxicated by their victories. So please could we have an end to this new politically correct fiction that the 1939 -45 War was fought against the Nazis -it wasn't -it was fought against the Germans.
Friday, 7 June 2013
Save our Forests 3 - a Legal solution?
The biggest threat to our forests is the International Trade in plants. I won't bore you with the details - as I have already done this in previous blogs - suffice to say plants are arriving in this country from all over the world - bringing with them diseases and pests which are causing, or threatening to cause - devastation in our woodlands.
The government - apart from lots of hand wringing and fine words - which - of course - butter no parsnips- as the saying goes -says it is virtually powerless to act as - under our EU treaty obligations we are unable to ban or restrict imports from fellow European states - even when those fellow European states are importing plants from China and such place before forwarding them on to us!
However it strikes me as bizarre that no one - has - as yet - explored the legal option - or even - as far I can understand from questioning Forestry Commission executives - even thought of it. My point is simple - if a nursery provides a client with stock which is diseased or carries a pest then surely that nursery should be liable in law for damages. The Processionary Moth - for instance - came into this country on consignments of semi mature trees from specific Dutch nurseries - we know the exact nursery - so why is no one taking them to court?
Similarly the outbreak of Chalara disease in Ash we know came in on diseased stock imported from Holland and Germany for planting out in the UK - why is no one suing the the nurseries which imported the stock or those on the continent which provided the diseased trees in the first place.
This - seeming - total absence of any form of legal liability for bringing in disease or pests - which may cost land owners and the tax payers many millions of pounds to try and eradicate or control - has resulted in the nursery trade for both forest and garden plants being totally cavalier and irresponsible in their sourcing of plant material.
Now imagine if someone brought a successful legal action against either a Dutch nursery or a UK nursery which had imported diseased stock from one. The said nurseries would of course have to fork out many millions and possibly go bust unless they had sufficient insurance cover. The effect, though, on the whole plant trade would - overnight - be miraculous - insurance underwriters would impose enormous increases in premium on those nurseries or landscape architects who fancied importing cheap trees from abroad. The nurseries in Holland would realise they had to clean up their act or - effectively -they would be banned from their largest market. In other words -One successful legal action - or even perhaps the threat of one - would have the effect of stopping the importation of suspect plant material without -in any way - breaching EU rules - a great result all round. All we need then is for someone to start the ball rolling. I doubt it will the government or the FC but there must be someone out there in the private sector who has suffered a pecuniary loss from disease so has a bona fide case in law. Surely - funding and bringing such a case -would be a great opportunity for that mega rich charity - the Woodland Trust - to come of age and do something which really would benefit Britian's woodlands - rather than just talking about it..
The government - apart from lots of hand wringing and fine words - which - of course - butter no parsnips- as the saying goes -says it is virtually powerless to act as - under our EU treaty obligations we are unable to ban or restrict imports from fellow European states - even when those fellow European states are importing plants from China and such place before forwarding them on to us!
However it strikes me as bizarre that no one - has - as yet - explored the legal option - or even - as far I can understand from questioning Forestry Commission executives - even thought of it. My point is simple - if a nursery provides a client with stock which is diseased or carries a pest then surely that nursery should be liable in law for damages. The Processionary Moth - for instance - came into this country on consignments of semi mature trees from specific Dutch nurseries - we know the exact nursery - so why is no one taking them to court?
Similarly the outbreak of Chalara disease in Ash we know came in on diseased stock imported from Holland and Germany for planting out in the UK - why is no one suing the the nurseries which imported the stock or those on the continent which provided the diseased trees in the first place.
This - seeming - total absence of any form of legal liability for bringing in disease or pests - which may cost land owners and the tax payers many millions of pounds to try and eradicate or control - has resulted in the nursery trade for both forest and garden plants being totally cavalier and irresponsible in their sourcing of plant material.
Now imagine if someone brought a successful legal action against either a Dutch nursery or a UK nursery which had imported diseased stock from one. The said nurseries would of course have to fork out many millions and possibly go bust unless they had sufficient insurance cover. The effect, though, on the whole plant trade would - overnight - be miraculous - insurance underwriters would impose enormous increases in premium on those nurseries or landscape architects who fancied importing cheap trees from abroad. The nurseries in Holland would realise they had to clean up their act or - effectively -they would be banned from their largest market. In other words -One successful legal action - or even perhaps the threat of one - would have the effect of stopping the importation of suspect plant material without -in any way - breaching EU rules - a great result all round. All we need then is for someone to start the ball rolling. I doubt it will the government or the FC but there must be someone out there in the private sector who has suffered a pecuniary loss from disease so has a bona fide case in law. Surely - funding and bringing such a case -would be a great opportunity for that mega rich charity - the Woodland Trust - to come of age and do something which really would benefit Britian's woodlands - rather than just talking about it..
Wednesday, 29 May 2013
Grey Squirrels & rabbits
This time last year I was over run with grey squirrels. Not just me either there was, for some reason, anyway in the South West of England, an explosion in the population of the grey squirrel with consummate appalling damage to young broadleaved trees.
What a contrast this year - a virtual dearth of grey squirrels. So what has happened? How can a species boom one year and bust the next - or was last years boom effectively the reason for this years bust? I long to know the answer. Oddly with the waning of the grey squirrel I have noticed a waxing of the rabbit population> I have never known so many rabbits and think back to my childhood when seeing a rabbit was quite an event - 99.99% of rabbits having been killed by myxomatosis. an old friend worked in the then Ministry of Agriculture and told me that the boffins aim was to completely exterminate the rabbit in the UK. One day the phone rang in his bosse's office. Someone had seen a healthy rabbit in an orchard in Kent - down they all went - with dogs and guns determined to kill this lone survivor - after an exhausting day they ended up killing five rabbits and missing one or two as well. They got back into their cars and drove back knowing that the rabbit would make a comeback one day - and - at Fulford anyway - that day has now happened. Bunny is back with a vengeance.
What a contrast this year - a virtual dearth of grey squirrels. So what has happened? How can a species boom one year and bust the next - or was last years boom effectively the reason for this years bust? I long to know the answer. Oddly with the waning of the grey squirrel I have noticed a waxing of the rabbit population> I have never known so many rabbits and think back to my childhood when seeing a rabbit was quite an event - 99.99% of rabbits having been killed by myxomatosis. an old friend worked in the then Ministry of Agriculture and told me that the boffins aim was to completely exterminate the rabbit in the UK. One day the phone rang in his bosse's office. Someone had seen a healthy rabbit in an orchard in Kent - down they all went - with dogs and guns determined to kill this lone survivor - after an exhausting day they ended up killing five rabbits and missing one or two as well. They got back into their cars and drove back knowing that the rabbit would make a comeback one day - and - at Fulford anyway - that day has now happened. Bunny is back with a vengeance.
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About Me
- Francis Fulford
- Francis Fulford is a writer, broadcaster and television personality. He lives at Great Fulford, a beautiful country estate in Devon that has been the home of the Fulford family since around 1190.
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