Blogoir

An interesting piece at NRO which reviews a new book by Robert Reilly, The Closing of the Muslim Mind.

It traces features of Islam (and indeed Christianity) back to the very deepest roots, namely core assumptions about God's nature laid down centuries ago:

While Christianity recognizes the possibility of miracles, when God intervenes to supersede natural law, in Islam every nanosecond is the functional equivalent of a miracle, the result of God’s divine act.

Thus there is no law of gravity, only God’s will, determining moment by moment that the apple will fall from the tree. Neither is there any morality, no objective good and evil as we in the West would see it, only the arbitrary decrees of an all-powerful God...

As hard as it is for the secular Left to accept, Western culture is founded on and steeped in the Judeo-Christian assumption that our innate understanding of what is right is a direct reflection of God’s goodness and justice as reflected in His universal law, to which even He adheres.

We make a mistake when we assume other cultures are necessarily speaking the same moral language.

Assumptions. Tricky things.

That reminds me of this:

Another former colleague recently said to me, "the trouble with you is that you reduce everything to first principles!"

He's right. I do. 

The risk for someone who does that lies in sounding like the wily but annoying Irishman who tells a lost traveller trying to get to Dublin that it is "no good starting from here".

The key advantage in looking hard and regularly at First Principles is that one is less likely to build a tall edifice on wobbly foundations. And perhaps more likely to be a better source of advice as to when something tall and imposing is in fact risking collapse.

The punditry gushes forth re Tony Blair and his memoirs.

Here on the Right is Simon Heffer, quiet Ayn Rand fan and very conservative in all respects, liking Mr Blair (whom he knows) but being baffled by the poor writing:

It appears to be a book written in tune with all the most unpleasant and cynical marketing techniques of modern publishing. Its tenor is often pure Sylvie Krin. The gossip in it will amuse those who like such things – whether about Mr Blair's liking a drink, his lusts for the late Diana, Princess of Wales, or the Queen's being "haughty" (a somewhat off-colour observation for her former first minister to make, we should reflect) – but is hardly becoming of an elder statesman.

How much this is the result of an instruction from his publishers to provide something that will make money, and how much it is the product of Mr Blair's own personality, one cannot be sure.

And on the Left, Mehdi Hasan at the New Statesman who looks with some scorn at the Blair record on Iraq:

Six of the country's top academic experts on Iraq and international security warned TB, in a face-to-face meeting in November 2002, that the consequences of an invasion could be catastrophic.

Cambridge University's George Joffe, one of the six invited to Downing Street, got the impression of "someone with a very shallow mind, who's not interested in issues other than the personalities of the top people, no interest in social forces, political trends, etc".

... No, I just think you're being dishonest, Tony. Seven years on from Iraq, nothing has changed.

One of the odd arguments against the Blair policy on Iraq is that it blames the West in general and Bush/Blair in particular for all the suffering caused by UN sanctions against Saddam's Iraq before the invasion. The Hasan piece drones on in this sense:

No mention here of the sanctions on Iraq, imposed by the United Nations, and enforced by the United States and the United Kingdom. Those sanctions caused the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Iraqi children, and were described by the former UN humanitarian co-ordinator in Iraq, Dennis Halliday, as a form of "genocide".

As even the Humanitarian Panel of the Security Council noted in March 1999: "Even if not all suffering in Iraq can be imputed to external factors, especially sanctions, the Iraqi people would not be undergoing such deprivations in the absence of prolonged measures imposed by the Security Council and the effects of the war".

What is it with Leftists? They say they want multilateralism and non-violent pressure against unjust regimes which brutalise international law and attack their neighbours. In this case they got exactly that.

Saddam invaded Kuwait and the planet more or less united around the proposition that he should be thrown off the premises. With bizarre restraint the first President Bush did not used the US presence in Iraq after Saddam's defeat to topple him.

Which meant that other measures were then needed to keep this madman under control. Including sanctions.

The whole point of sanctions is that they have bad effects. Admittedly the broader the sanctions, the worse the effects on ordinary people and the erosion of middle-class social stability. That, presumably, is again an intended market signal to the masses concerned to rise up and overthrow the regime provoking negative international reaction which is damaging their interests.

In practice odious regimes do well from sanctions and often even manage to blame the sanctioneers for the negative results, as happened in the Iraq case.

The core point is that if ordinary Iraqis suffered pain and deprivation from the sanctions regime, there was a simple answer.

Saddam could have agreed to step down to end the suffering of Iraq and its people, maybe negotiating some sort of immunity guarantees and/or safe passage to a state ready to host him. The international community thereupon could and would have helped Iraq supervise free and fair elections and so bring about a generously supported transition to reasonable modern pluralism.

That approach would have avoided all the misery and violence which happened.

That such misery and violence did in fact happen was squarely attributable not to Bush and Blair but to Saddam's and his national socialist regime's greedy desire to cling to power, no matter what.

Thus Leftish/progressive moaning about Blair's policy on this point at least is trivially dishonest, if not wicked propaganda.

That said, I don't think I'll be buying this book. Mawkishly written, plus the fact that Blair left Brown and so many other misfits in key positions for so long showed that, basically, he put his wretched party's interests (and his own) ahead of those of the UK. I have paid enough for his selfishness already.

Christopher Myers, the newly appointed 'Special Adviser' to Foreign Secretary William Hague, has resigned amidst a gush of crass innuendo from Guido and others re a possible homosexual relationship between Hague and Myers. 

Willaim Hague's statement on the issue has dignity and barely concealed anger - one of the most remarkable (and frank) things ever said by any Foreign Minister anywhere?

Iain Dale is upset, somehow assuming that this a bleak day for blogging and that 'political blogging' as such is diminished by this episode:

For those who doubt it, they forget (probably conveniently) that I spoke out against the bloggers who accused Gordon Brown of having mental problems. I freely admit that I don't get it right all the time, but when I get it wrong big time I try to hold my hands up and apologise.

I hope that happens in this case. The fact that Guido Fawkes has printed the Hague statement with no added comment indicates a growing realisation (I hope) that he called this one wrong.

I am afraid that all of us who blog have been sullied by this experience, even though only one blog was making the insinuations. I said on Radio 4's PM that there was part of me tonight that is ashamed to call myself a political blogger this evening, and I meant it. That may sound a bit holier than thou, but it is how I feel.

A somewhat self-absorbed and self-indulgent view? Why should he think that 'all of us who blog' have been sullied by this experience?

I don't.

Do journalists for serious newspapers feel 'sullied' by the ravings of tabloids? No.

None of this would have happened had Mr Myers not been given a unique and influentual role at the heart of UK foreign policy work. William Hague in his statement defended the appointment of Mr Myers thus:

Christopher Myers has demonstrated commitment and political talent over the last eighteen months. He is easily qualified for the job he holds.

The fact remains that there is not a whisker of evident benefit coming to taxpayers from this appointment. Even if (as some have wondered) Mr Myers is qualified for the job of an FCO Special Adviser, the job (in my view) should not exist in the first place at a time of such a squeeze on public finances.

Guido looks to have blown it on this one, but he is merely the latest and noisiest exponent of a fine tradition of political muckrakers.

See eg this from Zoe Archer, another story of people supposedly sharing a room:

... 18th century scandal rags gave readers plenty of outrageous behavior. Consider, for example Mrs. Crackenthorpe reporting on:

...Madam Slender-sense, who is lately fallen ill of a swelling she receiv'd by a slip the last ball night. Some are so rude as to say that Beau Garsoon, the French dancing master, was the occasion of it; and Mrs. Manlove, who generally searches into the bottom of such an affair, solemnly protests she saw them go up one pair of stairs together. What they did there, she can't tell, but the lady has been ailing ever since.

There was even a European angle:

... the French exile libellistes who flocked to London to publish scandalous or sexually salacious pamphlets in the hope of extorting lavish suppression fees. These ‘smut-mongering’ pamphleteers have become prominent figures in the recent historiography of the French revolution, with many historians contending that their ‘desacralizing’ and frequently pornographic publications sapped the foundations of the monarchy.

Not a bleak day for anything.

Just the unruly and sometimes downright unpleasant din of our hard-won freedom to lambast our leaders, hard at work.

Update: Guido apparently has replied himself on Iain's blog. Scroll down through the comments:

If ever there was a time for our leaders not only to behave with propriety, but to be seem to behave with propriety, this is it. It is disappointing to watch you climb on a moral high horse and go in the wrong direction...

Here is the full text of President Obama's speech (in fact TV address) on Iraq/Afghanistan.

Conservative-minded commentators in the USA give it mixed reviews (of course). Sample a few over at the Corner.

Ignoring - as far as one can - the substance, what about Technique?

First, it's long. Nearly 2600 words. That gives a large canvas on which to pose different questions and then give convincing answers.

Obama starts by defining the Iraq intervention in what is now a characteristically detached/abstract way:

A war to disarm a state became ... a fight against an insurgency.

Huh?

The words United Nations and Saddam do not figure in the speech. What was the so-called 'insurgency' all about? What did the various 'terrorists' and 'extremists' mentioned in the address want to achieve?

In short, what values were at stake? Not really explained:

The Americans who have served in Iraq completed every mission they were given. They defeated a regime that had terrorized its people. Together with Iraqis and coalition partners who made huge sacrifices of their own, our troops fought block by block to help Iraq seize the chance for a better future. They shifted tactics to protect the Iraqi people; trained Iraqi Security Forces; and took out terrorist leaders.

Because of our troops and civilians –and because of the resilience of the Iraqi people – Iraq has the opportunity to embrace a new destiny, even though many challenges remain.

Iraq no longer is terrorised by its own regime:

I encourage Iraq’s leaders to move forward with a sense of urgency to form an inclusive government that is just, representative, and accountable to the Iraqi people.

Does Obama have any view on whether that same sort of governance structure should be rolled out more widely in the region? Who knows?

No message for the neighbouring Iran regime, or indeed for the pro-reform masses there who too are struggling for a better deal? Or for other violent oppressors round the world? No.

Part of the problem with giving such a long address is maintaining a coherent but not boring argument. Speechwriters accordingly put in verbal padding to add colour. The results (if they are not careful) can be clumsy and/or mixed metaphors:

... a belief that out of the ashes of war, a new beginning could be born in this cradle of civilization

our nation’s strength and influence abroad must be firmly anchored in our prosperity at home. And the bedrock of that prosperity must be a growing middle class...

Billions of young people want to move beyond the shackles of poverty and conflict

In announcing the end of US combat missions in Iraq, the President might have offered some thoughts on the wider lessons to be drawn from this episode. Instead we get only one:

... one of the lessons of our effort in Iraq is that American influence around the world is not a function of military force alone. We must use all elements of our power – including our diplomacy, our economic strength, and the power of America’s example – to secure our interests and stand by our allies.

True enough but not especially convincing, the more so since Obama conspicuously did not describe Iraq as an 'ally'.

Given the dire state of the Democrats in the US opinion polls, it maybe is no surprise that the President used this address as a pep-talk for his domestic agenda. But the shift in gear into extended passages about the need for new domestic policies was abrupt and somehow not quite right for this occasion.

Worse, our old enemy the Musty Speech reared its musty head. According to Obama the following are musts:

• we must never lose sight of what’s at stake
• we must use all elements of our power
• we must project a vision of the future
• that effort must begin within our own borders
• our nation’s strength and influence abroad must be firmly anchored in our prosperity at home
• the bedrock of that prosperity must be a growing middle class
• we must tackle those challenges at home
• we must give all our children the education they deserve
• we must jumpstart industries that create jobs
• we must unleash the innovation that allows new products to roll off our assembly lines
• it must be our central mission as a people
• today’s servicemen and women must have the chance to apply their gifts
• we must earn victory through the success of our partners

As I put it in a quite different context:

This strange repetitive exhortatory language detached from any real analysis of the problems is reminiscent of the communist apparatchik from Party HQ standing on a barren collective farm field and addressing the workers.

He hectors them to even greater efforts to bring about the triumph of socialist productivity. They stare blankly at him, lost in their own thoughts and the disappointed emptiness of their blighted lives.

Speeches boil down to basic messages. What was the message here? Not really clear (and perhaps that's the Obama post-modern message?)?

Victor Davis Hanson:

Obama warns against “open-ended wars,” as if they are almost animate things. But wars end, not when they reach a rational, previously agreed-upon expiration date, but usually when tough, specific wartime choices are made that lead to victory or end in defeat.

One party must decide – for good or bad reasons – that it doesn’t want to fight to win, or simply doesn’t believe it has the resources for victory.

To say that “open-ended wars” are undesirable is a banality that offers no guidance for these real-life choices. A better truism is that America should not fight wars it does not intend to win.

Quite so.

Update: Roger Kimball magnificently accomplishes something most of us would have considered impossible and few of us would have dared attempt, namely linking this Obama address to the egregious burblings of Spode in Code of the Woosters:

President Obama has pronounced on the Cordoba Center (aka Ground Zero Mosque) controversy.Speaking to a Ramadan gathering he said this:

Recently, attention has been focused on the construction of mosques in certain communities -– particularly New York.

Now, we must all recognize and respect the sensitivities surrounding the development of Lower Manhattan.  The 9/11 attacks were a deeply traumatic event for our country.  And the pain and the experience of suffering by those who lost loved ones is (sic) just unimaginable.  So I understand the emotions that this issue engenders.  And Ground Zero is, indeed, hallowed ground. 

But let me be clear.  As a citizen, and as President, I believe that Muslims have the same right to practice their religion as everyone else in this country. And that includes the right to build a place of worship and a community center on private property in Lower Manhattan, in accordance with local laws and ordinances. 

This is America.  And our commitment to religious freedom must be unshakeable.  The principle that people of all faiths are welcome in this country and that they will not be treated differently by their government is essential to who we are.  The writ of the Founders must endure.

... And let us also remember who we’re fighting against, and what we’re fighting for.  Our enemies respect no religious freedom.  Al Qaeda’s cause is not Islam -– it’s a gross distortion of Islam.  These are not religious leaders -– they’re terrorists who murder innocent men and women and children.  In fact, al Qaeda has killed more Muslims than people of any other religion -– and that list of victims includes innocent Muslims who were killed on 9/11.

Good, principled stuff? Indeed rather safe, placing an emphasis on traditional US constitutional principles around which all might rally?

So the media thought, frothed up by White House spinners.

But then it all unravelled at speed, with all sorts of Democrats moving to put some distance between the President and themselves in this issue and sundry 'clarifications' coming from the White House.

Power Line astutely suggests where the President went wrong:

Obama's Cairo speech, delivered shortly after he became president, also relied heavily on the language of synthesis. The Jews have been hard done by, and so have the Palestinians, he argued. The synthesis lies in both groups recognizing the other's grievances, and proceeding from there.

The appeal of this type of rhetoric is obvious. First, Obama was able to cast himself as a reasonable man, capable of seeing both sides of an issue. Second, he was able to cast himself as a decent and charitable man, capable of seeing the good in the fiercest of clashing adversaries. Third, he was able to cast himself as an intelligent man (albeit in the facile manner of a bright college sophomore or a slightly above average law student), capable of finding similarities where lesser intellects can spot only differences.

Finally, and most importantly, Obama the synthesizer cast himself as a problem solver. His seeming ability to identify common ground was not just an exercise in intellectual nimbleness and human decency. For many, it held out the promise that longstanding conflicts might be made to recede...

... But Obama did not embrace, even intellectually, a synthesis in this matter. Rather, he came down squarely on the side of the imam. He spoke up on behalf of his right to build the mosque on "hallowed ground" without ever suggesting that doing so might be wrong or misguided.

In fact, he implied that putting the mosque at this spot was a favorable development because our willingness to have it there reaffirms who we are as a people and drives home the contrast between our values and those of jihadists...

Jonah Goldberg is unimpressed with the way Obama has tackled this one:

The supposedly pragmatic political wise men have been blinded by ideology or incompetence and have failed to see what was so obviously around the corner. A big, honking Islamic center built to capitalize on 9/11, in a building that was damaged on 9/11? What could go wrong?

... “He felt he had a responsibility to speak,” said David Axelrod, as if he were drafting the inscription on Obama’s Profiles in Courage Award. But by Saturday morning, Obama tried to weasel out of it with the sort of lawyerly parsing everybody despises. Speaking to reporters in Florida, Obama claimed he had no position on the “wisdom” of the project, and anyone who mistook his academic comments about building a mosque in Lower Manhattan for an endorsement misunderstood him.

Well, if his real intent was to remain agnostic, he should fire his speechwriter immediately.

Of course that wasn’t his intent. He wanted to seem heroically principled. But when he was hit with an entirely foreseeable backlash (according to one poll, nearly 70 percent of Americans oppose the mosque), he once again led with his glass jaw and, in effect, told everybody they were too dimwitted to grasp the brilliant nuance of his remarks.

Fire the Obama speechwriter? Yes.

Forgetting the merits, look at the poor technique and remember that it is not that politicians make mistakes as they all do - it is the quality of those mistakes which are so revealing.

Basically, the Obama 'remarks' erred towards a trite, oh-too-clever legal formalism which was clearly just not politically or morally good enough in the circumstances.

As some Democrat-leaning commentators are saying, President Bush would not have been so obviously banal. Whether or not you liked the policy, Bush's speeches had a sense of intellectual integrity, of someone not ducking the hard questions. Of, in a word, leadership.

Here's what I would have drafted. Note not so much the language, but the underlying chain of thought:

The 9/11 attacks were a deeply traumatic event for our country.  The pain and  suffering for those who lost loved ones are unimaginable.  Ground Zero is, indeed, hallowed ground. 

Some people see the 9/11 attacks as an onslaught by Islam itself against the USA. That's not what I believe. Al Qaeda’s cause is not Islam -– it’s a gross distortion of Islam.  These are not religious leaders -– they’re terrorists who murder innocent men and women and children.  In fact, al Qaeda has killed more Muslims than people of any other religion -– and that list of victims includes innocent Muslims who were killed on 9/11.

Our country allows freedom of religion. We have thousands of churches and synagogues and chapels and mosques. People are free to build new ones, subject to local planning laws and such formalities.

This is not the case in many parts of the world. And it is bound to offend and even annoy many Americans if support for this new Islamic centre in this special area of New York comes from countries which oppress Christianity, Judaism other religions in the name of Islam, or from Islamic groups which demand respect for their supposed sensitivities but rail against the sensitivities of others.

Tolerance is not a blank cheque for those who think ill of our country to abuse its freedom. But we do not deal with intolerance by being intolerant ourselves...

Something like that would have touched on the core policy and philosophical dilemmas here, at least obliquely. And sent a firm but friendly message to Islam that yes, it too needs to work towards the highlands of freedom and open-mindedness.

Instead, as Goldberg says the President's poor drafting has simply made the whole business much worse, not least for Obama himself:

By elevating an already stupid idea and a poisonous debate, he forced everyone to take a side on a polarizing issue (including vulnerable Democrats like Nevada senator Harry Reid, who, late Monday, came out against the mosque), while undermining his own credibility, not to mention America’s reputation around the world.

Here is a round-up of interesting links on the so-called GZM controversy in the USA - should a Muslim cultural centre cum mosque be built close to the site of the 9/11 terror attacks on the World Trade Center in New York?

Or not? If not, why not?

Peter Beinart says that in revealing a geyser of Islamophobic hysteria (or something like that) America has disgraced itself:

Once upon a time, the “war on terror” was supposed to bring American values to Saudi Arabia. Now Newt Gingrich says we shouldn’t build a mosque in Lower Manhattan until the Saudis build churches and synagogues in Mecca—which is to say, we’re bringing Saudi values to the United States.

Not exactly.

What in fact has happened is an unSaudi-like good ol' US public intellectual ding-dong about Rules and Values, with all sorts of people on Left and Right alike spiralling off in unexpected directions.

Take William Dalrymple, not normally associated with wild-eyed radicalism, who points out some of the subtler issues involved. The Cordoba Centre is being supported by the Sufi tendency in Islam, one the West should encourage:

Feisal Abdul Rauf of the Cordoba Initiative is one of America’s leading thinkers of Sufism, the mystical form of Islam, which in terms of goals and outlook couldn’t be farther from the violent Wahhabism of the jihadists... 

His slightly New Agey rhetoric makes him sound, for better or worse, like a Muslim Deepak Chopra. But in the eyes of Osama bin Laden and the Taliban, he is an infidel-loving, grave-worshiping apostate; they no doubt regard him as a legitimate target for assassination.

Victor Hanson Davis is more cynical:

Here at home well-meaning liberals would applaud the audacity of hope in positioning a mosque near the 9/11 site in order to “commemorate” the “tragedy,” as a token of tolerance where all could come together and thus avoid another misunderstanding of the sort that sent two airliners crashing into two skyscrapers. 

 

Abroad, the message would, of course, be interpreted quite differently: To the radical Islamists, a mosque rising near Ground Zero well before a new World Trade Center is constructed is a message of Islamic triumphalism — in the long tradition of minarets on the conquered Santa Sophia in Istanbul, the eighth-century Al-Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem rising on the site of the destroyed Jewish Second Temple, and the great mosque at Cordoba retrofitted from the gutted Christian Church of St. Vincent.

Elsewhere too views diverge. See eg some Muslim Republicans:

Muslim Republicans like David Ramadan and Randa Fahmy Hudome see it as a free-exercise issue that shouldn’t be demagogued for midterm gain, and longtime blogger Aziz Poonawalla gave a thoughtful interview to fellow blogger Scott Payne reiterating his support for the project and his misgivings about how both opponents and Park51 management have handled the subject.

Why not go all the way on tolerance while we're at it? Build a bar for gay Muslims right next to the new Center:

"I hope that the mosque owners will be as open to the bar, as I am to the new mosque. After all, the belief driving them to open up their center near Ground Zero, is no different than mine. My place, however, will have better music."

Liberty Girl looks vigorously at the whole business from the point of view of first principles of freedom:

So now come these guys who want to build a mosque.  Not just any mosque, but named for freaking Cordoba, the virtual capital of Moor occupied Spain.  And not just any place, but in the still bleeding heart of an American tragedy.

Can anyone, ANYONE, show me where in the Constitution we are guaranteed the right to not be offended?

... This is not about whether or not we, as a people, agree with the deliberate slap in the face the mosque and community center builders want to deliver to us.  Especially since they have chosen September 11 as the dedication date. 

They are absolutely trying to get a reaction from us.  They WANT us to either halt the deal so they can say “Look, the Americans are breaking their own Constitution to stop us from building this” or to let it go through so they can say “Look, the Americans are so weak they didn’t even try to stop us from building this.” 

Either way, they get their propaganda. Either way, they can turn to their Muslim brethren and boast about how they outwitted us...

She advocates letting them build:

I think I would rather be called coward and know that it isn’t true than be called bully and know that it is.

Maybe that's the point in all thus hubbub?

That the same sort of people who clamour for Islamic 'sensitivities' to be respected and edge towards giving militant Muslims a de facto right to ban anything which 'offends' them (eg cartoons) are now insisting primly on Muslims' freedom under the law to build a mosque wherever they choose, regardless of the sensitivities of others who might be unhappy?

Which brings us elegantly to President Obama's speechwriter. See next posting.

The grim profile of the US Federal Reserve's balance sheet.

Volcanic?

Here's an interesting one.

The German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle is homosexual. He has decided not to take his partner with him on official visits to countries where homosexuality is a prosecutable crime.

His somewhat obscure argument as quoted in the excellent Spiegel Online:

We want to promote the concept of tolerance in the world ...

But we also don't want to achieve the opposite by behaving imprudently. At the same time it is important that we live according to our own measures of tolerance and that we do not adopt the sometimes less tolerant measures of others.

This position prompts an energetic rant from one Henryk Broder:

One doesn't have to read his remark twice to understand what it signifies: Tolerance is a wonderful thing, but we shouldn't push our luck. This is more than the usual hot air from a politician. Westerwelle's words are an example of moral hara-kiri in slow motion, and they're a disgrace for Germany...

It also isn't entirely clear whether Westerwelle truly considered the potential impact of his statement or was simply babbling away. How does he intend to "promote the idea of tolerance in the world" by making allowances for the intolerance of his hosts? From his office at FDP headquarters? By giving the opening remarks at the Christopher Street Day event in Cologne?

Or perhaps by covering up his partner in a burqa on overseas trips?

Westerwelle isn't malicious or stupid. He just has a shocking tendency to speak without reflecting. The very idea that we ought to behave prudently so as not to "achieve the opposite" is wrong. This way of thinking begins with the desire not to provoke anyone, in the interest of preserving the peace, and ends with self-abandonment.

'Babbling away'? A German!? Unmöglich.

Is Westerwelle right? Mainly yes.

Because one of the ways in which the world works is by people more or less accepting the policies of other countries when they visit them. Diplomats have to especially careful - that comes with the job.

Diplomats based overseas are expected to behave in a way befitting senior guests and (in theory) are under strict instructions to respect local laws, hence periodic flurries over unpaid Embassy parking fines - always a tricky one. But where do local laws merge mysteriously into unspoken and slippery local standards? Not always easy to identify what is ruled in - and ruled out - in practice. 

One way or the other, those venerable (if not venereable) norms of interstate intercourse would be undermined if the Foreign Minister (no less) of the Embassy concerned arrived in the local capital and appeared to be challenging head-on a well-known and controversial law.

Any visit by him + partner to a country where homosexuality is illegal in effect is some sort of act of defiance - I dance on your puny laws and prejudices, o pathetic foreigners.

It puts the host government (who may be edging towards being more flexible in this area) in an awkward spot vis-a-vis their own public opinion: why are you letting foreigners come here and break our laws?

Perhaps above all, it simply creates high-profile controversy of a sort which is likely to make things locally tougher for equality principles in the short term at least, and in any case detracts from if not wrecks completely whatever core objectives an official foreign visit might have.

Look at it another way. Just say Germany legalised cannabis, on the solid basic human rights ground that smoking cannibis was a private matter and none of the state's business. Would that make it ok for the Foreign Minister to take a joint with him and puff away at official events overseas in countries where cannabis was still illegal?

Obviously not. Not an exact parallel, perhaps, but good enough.

There are other ways to get the message of equality across to foreign governments at a high formal level. The partner can be officially invited to functions hosted in Germany by Herr Westerwelle for foreign dignitaries from 'intolerant' countries. In which case Herr Westerwelle might not be surprised if all of a sudden the willingness of foreign dignitaries to attend such events declines sharply - they will not want to be presented in Germany and at home as photo-opportunity fodder for gay rights.

Or the German Embassy in said intolerant countries can organise seminars on gay and other equal rights issues. If, that is, it does not want to deal with demonstrations and protests froth'd up by angry locals annoyed at German 'interference' in their internal affairs.

One other angle. How could Herr Westerwelle defend himself against accusations from a homosexual member of the German Embassy in a country he was visiting who had been posted there partnerless to avoid breaking local law: why are you using your seniority to get private privileges your Ministry deny the rest of us?

The hard fact is that some diplomatic issues fall into the Alas, All Too Difficult tray. And this is one of them, even though gay rights are gaining ground round the planet; see this Wikipedia round-up, which brings out just how many, hem, permutations there are in this area.

It all comes back to how and where a country Flies the Flag:

Order all our EU Embassies to fly that, er, MGB GT Flag immediately.”

"A certain circumspection may be in order, Sir. If we establish the practice with some care in EU Europe, we can move on with confidence and ambition and due deliberation elsewhere. North Korea and Belarus suggest themselves for the next decade. Antarctica too, perhaps, subject to close consultation with the other Antarctic Treaty Parties..?”

“Zimbabwe?” 

“We in fact flew the LGBT flag there this morning, Sir. This was done with a view to broadening their horizons away from their current political difficulties, by opening a new national dialogue about tolerance and fair play. This plan alas backfired. The rival political factions united against us, in an unexpected but robust show of unity. Our High Commission was burned down this morning. In the ensuing skirmishes with the mob the flag – alas still attached to the flag-pole itself - was used to impale the High Commissioner in a most unhappy and even theatrical fashion...”

The BBC lovingly analyses Fidel Castro's speech to the 'National Assembly' in Havana:

... a hush descended ... He smiled and waved to the crowd as he lapped up the warmth of their applause ... a short but polished performance from the lively and healthy-looking Fidel Castro, his voice stronger and more assured ... Now it seems he may have found a new mission in later life - to save the world from nuclear destruction.

Thank goodness for that. I was getting worried there.

The whole speech lasted just over 10 minutes and then, seated, he fielded questions for another hour.

Er ... and what did he say then?

For that we turn to the Miami Herald.

Castro made a couple of blunders, referring to the Russians/Russia as 'the USSR' and 'the Soviets'. Plus he claimed that the Big Bang which formed the universe happened 18,000 years ago.

Really?

With all this fretting about nuclear war and now this, maybe he's getting all his Big Bangs muddled up?

What a farce.

Have you read this production of mine from 2008? An extract:

Recently I was a Harvard-sponsored seminar at which issues of international 'humanitarian intervention' and the Right to Protect were discussed.

I recalled seeing signs as one entered Harvard Square: Cambridge is a Domestic Violence-Free Zone.

I said that if you were walking down the street near Harvard and saw a man beating his wife/child/dog brutally with a stick in his front garden, you were morally and maybe even these days legally obligated to intervene to stop the violence.

Thus we long ago moved on from the idea that the 'sovereignty' of one's home was a shield behind which seriously illegal acts could proceed uninterrupted.

So if it is unacceptable to brutalise one person in one's own garden, why is it acceptable to brutalise millions of people in one's country without fear of being stopped?

Enter the Right to Protect (R2P), the idea (a) that states do have exclusive sovereignty over their own internal affairs but also (b) that that sovereignty is qualified: other members of the international communty may intervene to stop massive crimes against a population when that population's own government is either taking part in the mayhem - or is powerless or unwilling to stop it.

Sounds ok?

In principle, yes. In practice, no one trusts anyone else so basic motives are questioned.

Those governments making the case for an intervention to protect a beleaguered population from oppression will tend to be seen in many parts of the world as Western do-gooders bent on reasserting long-lost hegemony. The more so since, almost by definition, any intervention will have to be forceful to stop the oppression.

Those governments arguing against any intervention can end up defending the indefensible. Showing scant regard for freedom and democracy in their own country, they end up in substance siding with gangsters and warlords rather than their victims. Which is why insistence that the 'UN route' be followed is unconvincing. Too many undemocratic hypocrites taking part in the decision.

All of which leaves moderate, reasonable people like us in a dilemma.

On the one hand, when it comes to environmental we they are told that we all live in one big Global Village and that we have responsibilities accordingly. Urgent action is needed now to stop huge numbers of people dying in the future because of climate change.

On the other hand, what about sizeable numbers of people dying now because of corrupt governments, warlords and gangsters? What of our responsibilities towards them?

Yet aren't these problems all just too ... far away? Doesn't Afghanistan show the folly of such Western/international interventions? Why should we be the world's policeman? We can't even sort out puny Kosovo.

And so on.

The current reality is that the Obama administration from the top down has nothing much to say on all this, other than that it is all very difficult. True enough. European leadership is uncertain and uneasy. So if you're planning significant war crimes or genocide any time soon, the prospects for doing so successfully are quite good.

Here is a powerful essay by Richard Just which looks at these questions both as they apply to Sudan and generally. The middle section is perhaps mainly for Sudan experts, but the opening and closing sections give a firm, energetic and honest account of the policy and other realities in this most problematic of all foreign policy areas.

On this site I have warned readers about the pernicious impact of the EU's several attempts to limit working hours by law, especially in the UK National Health Service.

See eg here.

And here.

My best friend happens to be an NHS consultant. He has warned me for years about the way the Working Time Directive has scaled back training hours for doctors, which must lead to more blunders in treating patients when the doctors are finally working alone.

Plus he made a not so obvious point about 'information decay'. The more shifts you introduce into hospital work as caused by the WTD, the information about patients has to be passed from doctor to doctor more often and so tends to decline. Decisions become less smart. 

Not to forget the fact that a new trend must emerge, namely slowing down one's effort as a shift draws to an end and leaving any tricky issue to the next doctor.

All of which is duly happening:

Consultants who took part in the study were most damning about the impact of the changes on their trainees.

Among responses from more than 500 senior surgeons taking part were repeated warnings that the rules were creating a generation of "clock-watchers" with a "lazy work ethic" who no longer felt personal responsibility for their patients.

Trainees were now spending so little time in operating theatres that they would lack the "cutting skills" required to perform safely when they became consultants, many warned.

College president John Black urged the Government to take urgent action to address the concerns, having pledged in its Coalition agreement that it would work to limit the application of the EU rules in the UK.

He described the situation facing the NHS as "acutely urgent".

Mr Black said: "Without action we are going to see a generation of specialists with less experience than any that have gone before."

As previously noted, the vile Precautionary Principle is used to stop all sorts of actions by citizens on a 'just in case' basis. But when it comes to official policies which are obviously likely to lead to people dying at the hands of the state, it is nowhere to be seen.

Madness:

The heart surgeon, 48, said that by the time she became a consultant, nine years ago, she had undertaken 900 cardiac operations. The current generation were likely to become senior doctors after performing less than 300, she said.

See the wild reaction on the streets of Karachi, as angry but illiterate crowds protest against the British Prime Minister's remarks about Pakistan and terrorism

Tsk.

It should either be Loo's or Loos'.

See also the distinguished role being played in the drama by HM High Commissioner to Pakistan, Adam Thomson, namely to be 'summoned' and given a severe talking to by the Pakistan government.

I wrote about this sort of thing back in May last year (alas the link to my DIPLOMAT magazine article back then no longer works):

You know the story. Only too well. Your spouse yells at you for what you have done. Or for what you have not done. Or for what you have come to represent in the tumultuous relationship. Frustrated and cross, you yell at your children. And in their frustration and crossness, your children kick the cat.

So it is with foreign ministries. Taking heat from public opinion and the prime minister/president on an awkward foreign policy problem? Frustrated and/or cross? No local cat available? Find a foreign one! Kick (out) a diplomat!

Mind you, Adam has strong family form in that part of the world and so should cope with this situation most decorously.

Remember this piece about David Horowitz on Christopher Hitchens?

Are you busy, with lots to do?

Forget all that, and read this long transcript of American conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt in conversation with Hitchens, now on heavy cancer treatment.

Hitchens is a ferociously well read and knowledgeable person. He is a massively opinionated writer who has taken it upon himself to go and see things for himself, a Leftist in the best Orwell tradition of staring fearlessly at tyranny, hypocrisy and stupidity wherever they loom large.

In a way I was hoping that Hewitt would drill down deeper than he does into Hitchens' beliefs (and maybe his own). Yet the discussion perhaps is all the more engaging because it is so wide-ranging and unexpected.

Hitchens on an evil Argentinian general:  I describe him as looking like a human toothbrush. He was a sort of starch, lean officer with a silly mustache, and a very stupid look to him, but a very fanatical glint as well... He’s in prison in Argentina for selling the children of the rape victims among the private prisoners, who he kept in a personal jail. And I don’t know if I’ve ever met anyone who’s done anything as sort of condensedly horrible as that, if you know what I mean. 

Hitchens on possible death:  when Mark Twain was pronounced dead in the newspapers, he said rumors of his death had been greatly exaggerated. I read so many nice things about myself now I begin to think that rumors of my life have been a bit exaggerated.

Hitchens on social class:  you also learn that at the absolute height of bad manners is to be rude to someone who is, I don’t mean these words, but you know what one would call social inferiors. You mustn’t be rude to waiters or servants or anything like that, because it’s taking advantage of something that’s unfairly conferred on you.

Hitchens on reading widely and learning things:  I’d rather do anything than patronize people. I’d rather say look, I know this. There’s no reason you shouldn’t. And if you didn’t, don’t complain. I’ve just given you the opportunity to check it out. And I backed myself, saying I think there is a gold standard in writing, and in the world of ideas. And I know something about it, and I’d like to introduce you to it, too.

Hitchens on Israel:  for Israel to become part of the alliance against whatever we want to call it, religious barbarism, theocratic, possibly thermonuclear theocratic or nuclear theocratic aggression, it can’t, it’ll have to dispense with the occupation. It’s as simple as that. It can be, you can think of it as a kind of European style, Western style country if you want, but it can’t govern other people against their will...

And I’m afraid I know too much about the history of the conflict to think of Israel as just a tiny, little island surrounded by a sea of ravening wolves and so on. I mean, I know quite a lot about how that state was founded, and the amount of violence and dispossession that involved. And I’m a prisoner of that knowledge. I can’t un-know it.

Hitchens on John Sparrow:  his role in the life of the university of Oxford was to act the part of the most comic, antediluvian reactionary that it was possible to pick, a man who lived in a college that was full of vast riches of endowment that was famous mainly for its dining and its port, almost a parody of Oxford as the home of lost causes, and of extreme monarchical and Anglican conservatism. I mean, we could hardly believe there was someone as amusing as that still around in the 60s.

Hitchens on Castro:  “if the most salient figure in this state was immune from critical comment, then all the rest was detail. Ah, never forget how useful the obvious can be.”

Hitchens on Iraq:  The fall of Saddam Hussein was generally very positively experienced. And I think it will be remembered as a great thing to have done. But unfortunately, the overlay of incompetence and mismanagement and bungling that followed the liberation is never going to be forgiven or forgotten. And by the way, I don’t think it should be.

Hitchens on Obama:  He just seems to believe, it was same watching him with Netanyahu this week, as if all this can be resolved, you know, man to man, these are just misunderstandings that can be ironed out by people of goodwill. He doesn’t seem to have the concept of radical conflicts of interest at all.

Just wonderful verve, confidence and insight.

Take time out and read it all. You'll learn something.

Then swing by Amazon and buy this, as I have just done:

Toy Story 3 is just superb. Go and see it.

One highlight is Barbie abruptly hollering out one of the greatest ideas of Thomas Jefferson:

Authority should derive from the consent of the governed; not from the threat of force

Hurrah!

Yet ... what if those governing start off that way, but then slowly but surely change the rules towards rewarding themselves first and looking after the governed second?

How are the governed to withdraw their consent from this situation, when the governors of all main political parties seem to have more in common with each other than with those who pay taxes and vote?

This problem featured in a very different context in the famous 1957 book by Milovan Djilas, The New Class: An Analysis of the Communist System.

Djilas had been one of the very top Titoist communists after WW2. Some older Serbian staff working in the Embassy in the early 1980s hated his memory, as (they said) he had dominated Belgrade after the war wearing jackboots and carrying a whip brutally to impose comunist rule.

With the publication of this book Djilas was sent to prison by the Yugo-communists and achieved international glory as the first senior communist leader to renounce communism in its Stalinist-bureaucratic form.

Djilas' core ideologically devastating argument was that far from replacing a class-free society, the new communist elite themselves had become an effective class, hoarding power and privileges for themselves at the expense of the masses.

Which leads us now, via Barbie, straight to this:

The current state of American politics can be summed up in this poll data, published today by Rasmussen Reports:

75% of Likely Voters prefer free markets over a government managed economy. Just 14% think a government managed economy is better while 11% are not sure.

Well, one would hope so. But here is the kicker:

America's Political Class is far less enamored with the virtues of a free market. In fact, Political Class voters narrowly prefer a government managed economy over free markets by a 44% to 37% margin.

... It strikes me that these data largely explain the political turmoil of the last year. The political class, now firmly in the saddle in Washington, wants to substitute government control for free choice wherever possible.

Since members of the political class communicate mostly with each other, they evidently underestimated the extent to which such policies would be unpopular with mainstream Americans.

A point also made eloquently by Glenn Reynolds (Instapundit).

All of which applies to the European Union too. Whatever its merits in allowing all sorts of processes to be 'harmonised' for general public benefit, the fact remains that the 'consent of the governed' is not exactly something which preys upon EU elite minds as they pile on new 'Directives'.

Where is all this heading?

Somewhere dangerous, I fear.

I bewail the creepy drift in our political culture from Reason to Emotion, from Objective to Subjective - over at Business and Politics.

The legal processes surrounding the attempt by Belgrade to get former BH Presidency member Ejup Ganic extradited from London to Serbia to face war crimes charges rumble on.

The latest hearing has ended. According to the Sarajevo media, judgement is expected on 27 July.

Needless to say, media reports of the detailed legal issues at stake have been fitful. Some attention has focused on the various claims made by the Ganic team:

• that Serbia's application was flawed on its face or substantively
• that it has no substantive merit and/or presents no evidence which has not been presented in other courts and dismissed as inadequate
• that Ganic can not expect a fair trial in Belgrade

Lawyers representing Serbia have replied:

• that there is enough evidence to launch a substantive prosecution in Belgrade
• and that the Hague Tribunal and other courts are cooperating well with the war crimes courts in Belgrade, and indeed congratulating Belgrade on its work in this difficult area - a fair trial will be assured

My barrister training back in the mists of time taught me one thing: to look at the merits of the case in hand.

The point here (as far as I can see - I may be wrong) is that this is not a case about war crimes. It is about extradition law.

The London courts are not expected or even empowered under the relevant law and guidlelines to delve far into the substance of the allegations against Mr Ganic.

They are dealing with allegations made by state A and against a citizen of state B. Their task is primarily to ascertain whether as a matter of law state A (here Serbia) has met the standards required for Mr Ganic to be transferred to Belgrade.

In terms of where the matter stands procedurally, the Home Office guidelines for cases involving Category 2 territories (which both Serbia and Bosnia are) suggest that we have just had the 'extradition hearing'.

This is interesting (emphasis added):

Some countries are not required to provide prima facie evidence in support of their request for extradition. These countries are (as of 1 January 2007):

Albania, Andorra, Armenia, Australia, Azerbaijan, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Canada, Croatia, Georgia, Iceland, Israel, Liechtenstein, Macedonia FYR, Moldova, Montenegro, New Zealand, Norway, Russian Federation, Serbia, South Africa, Switzerland, Turkey, Ukraine and the United States of America.

Then there's this:

The judge must satisfy himself that the request meets the requirements of the 2003 Act, including dual criminality and where appropriate, prima facie evidence of guilt; and that none of the bars to extradition apply (the rule against double jeopardy; extraneous considerations; passage of time or hostage-taking considerations).

Finally, he is required to decide whether the person’s extradition would be compatible with the convention rights within the meaning of the Human Rights Act 1998.

If he decides all of these questions in the affirmative, he must send the case to the Secretary of State for the latter’s decision whether the person is to be extradited. Otherwise, he must discharge the person.

In other words, Serbia does not have to clear too high a legal hurdle on the substance of its extradition request, since Serbia (like Bosnia and Herzegovina) is among the countries whose word and processes are deemed by English law to be respectable enough not to merit deeper investigation.

If the judge decides in favour of extradition, the case goes to the Secretary of State, but only for further consideration under three headings. The Secretary of State is not to look at the wider merits of the issue:

Secretary of State

Where a case is sent to the Secretary of State she (sic) must consider whether surrender is prohibited because:

1. the person could face the death penalty: This is an absolute prohibition unless the Secretary of State receives an adequate written assurance from the requesting state that the death penalty will not be imposed, or will not be carried out, if imposed
2. there are no speciality arrangements with the requesting country: The condition of “speciality” requires that the person must be dealt with in the requesting state only for the offences in respect of which the person is extradited (except in certain limited circumstances)
3. the person was earlier extradited to the UK: this might require the Secretary of State to obtain the consent of the earlier extraditing country, before the person can be extradited on to the requesting state...

If the Secretary of State does find that surrender is prohibited, she must order the discharge of the person. If none of the three prohibitions apply, or appropriate assurances have been given, the Secretary of State must order the person to be extradited.

In the Ganic case the three rather technical prohibitions applied at the political level do not (I assume) apply. So if the Secretary of State is in due course presented with a ruling from the judge confirming Ganic's extradition to Serbia, on the face of it that ruling will have to be upheld.

If the Secretary of State does order extradition Ganic can appeal, just as Serbia can appeal against a decision in favour of Ganic by either the judge or the Secretary of State.

And who knows, maybe wily lawyers on either side will come up with other proceedings (eg based on UK or EU Human Rights norms) to add new complications.

In short, plenty of legal juice - and juicy fees - remain to be squeezed before Mr Ganic very finally gets on a plane bound for either Belgrade.

Or Sarajevo. 

At long last we are starting to be honest about the national indebtedness issues we face:

The true scale of Britain's national indebtedness was laid bare by the Office for National Statistics yesterday: almost £4 trillion, or £4,000bn, about four times higher than previously acknowledged.

It quantifies the burden that will be placed on future generations, and it is the ONS's first attempt to draw together the "off-balance-sheet" liabilities that have been accumulated by the state. The figures imply a huge "intergenerational transfer" – broadly in favour of today's "baby boomer" generation at the expense of younger people and future generations.

The debt primarily consists of the cost of public sector and state pensions, and of payments promised to private contractors under private finance initiatives. It far exceeds any of the figures so far published for the national debt, the largest current estimate for which is £903bn. That is projected to rise to £1.3trn by 2015...

It's impossible for us mere taxpayers to put our heads round what that means, although the Indy tries:

Failure to cut back now or raise taxes – and there is little sign of the population clamouring to make life easier for the as-yet-unborn – will leave future taxpayers with an additional burden of £200,000 each over their lifetimes to pay for the public services enjoyed by this and previous generations.

Even with current plans to reduce the deficit, the tax bill would still be as high as £150,000 over the life of someone born in 2011.

Hmm. A bit more than £2000 per year over a lifetime suddenly starts to seem not quite so bad? These figures are enormous. But the national wealth generated by millions of people working away over generations is even more enormous.

One way or the other, the article brings out well the emerging question of 'intergenerational justice' - how far should we be borrowing from unborn people to pay for rubbish like climate change exhibitions at the UN?

And once we start thinking that government now should pay only for what people living now really can afford now, the size of government might well start to fall pretty fast as voters look hard at what they really want to pay for.

This also explains the nervous efforts made by collectivists to get away from the language of tax and debt.

It's not debt. It's investment, see?

Fine. Some of it is. A road built now benefits people well into the future.

But no business gets a blank cheque from the bank to make investments which have costs now and results later. Governments have to stop pretending that they are different.

As is deftly argued by Jonathan Davis who has the temerity to wonder whether Paul Krugman is talking tosh:

Not even to begin laying the ground for reductions in public spending today, let alone to confront the huge unfunded liabilities that lie beyond budget planning horizons, makes little sense. On past form it will take years for any cuts announced today to be fully implemented, if indeed they can be achieved at all.

Just as 364 economists turned out to be wrong when they denounced Sir Geoffrey Howe’s infamous 1981 UK budget, it is not axiomatic to me that Prof Krugman and co are right this time round...

Have a quick look at this latest example of junk diplomacy, hard at work with our money:

The exhibition “Climate Faces — Changing Earth, Changing Lives”, now on display in the Main Gallery of the Visitors Lobby of United Nations Headquarters, will be opened formally in a 6 p.m. ceremony on Wednesday, 14 July.

Included in the exhibition are photographs and testimonials from two British Council global projects: “Cape Farewell”, which chronicles a voyage to witness the effects of climate change in the Canadian arctic by 28 high school students as well as scientists and artists from around the world; and “Turning the Tide”, featuring illustrations submitted in a photo contest by young people in 40 countries, showing how climate change impacts their communities.

A perfect tsunami of wasted money involving the UN, World Bank and British Council preening each other's egos to emit propaganda.

As an eagle-eyed reader says:

A good example of circular opinion forming.

Large governmental or international organisations funded by the taxpayer to organise events to create/increase public pressure on those same organisations to do what they themselves wanted to do in the first place to justify their own existences and salaries.

Cut. Then cut harder.

Crawf Minor (Lower Sixth) is in hot pursuit of several Maths A-Levels here in the UK.

All of which reminds me that once upon a long lost time I could pick my way through the mysteries of cos and sin and even on a good day tan.

Not to forget my old enemy: d²y/dx²   This allowed one to calculate not the rate of change, but the rate at which the rate changed.

Or something like that. I think.

People who can fathom out this sort of thing are smart. In fact, some of them go on from tricky basic maths to acquire lively and unpredictable new pets:

Langton got involved with ants.       

Paterson with worms.

Others had to make do with turmites. Or even busy beavers.

The notable thing about this sort of thing from our point of view is the deep idea that order (and 'orders') can and do come forth naturally without clumsy central direction. A light framework plus a few very simple rules are enough to generate impressively large and robust new structures. 

Which is where we walk over to Cafe Hayek (where orders emerge) and read this excellent piece about why new developments are often disappointing, and why indeed a solution to a problem often isn't very widely applicable:

Development happens thanks to problem-solving systems ...any solution that is going to work is likely to come from the use of local knowledge, or at least dispersed knowledge rather than some expert who proposes some solution from the outside without local knowledge.

That's the core brilliant Hayekian idea, unanswered by collectivists and centralisers of all shapes and sizes - dispersed knowledge.

More:

You can’t just take some piece of a market-based solution and impose it from the top down. You want organically emergent solutions that bring all the pieces along at once. Competition encourages the other pieces to emerge. Top-down solutions usually constrain competition and miss out on the extra parts of the puzzle.

... How do you liberate people to allow them to help themselves? You look for the barriers that keep them from helping themselves. Ironically, sending large amounts of money to corrupt leaders probably creates the single largest barrier.

Of course.

Which is why the rise of the mobile telephone gives Africans new chances to help themselves without development experts and corrupt leaders pushing them around.

And, perhaps, why it is a good and profound move to move huge slabs of NHS money to general practitioners (ie non-hospital doctors) so as to try to capture  much more directly in public health spending the benefits of all that dispersed GP knowledge about the nation's aliments ?

Liam Murray notes that the Department of Health has four speechwriters, one for each Minister.

Plus 35 other people in the PR/Spin area.

This is ridiculous.

Cut. Then cut harder.