Better it Were Done Quickly

Saturday morning and the international press pack are bored rigid in their Tripoli hotel. They have been promised yet another trip to see examples of Gaddafi's 'utopian' society and the population's unceasing devotion to their leader.

Then into the lobby burst Iman Al-Obeidi (pictured above). She made claims of rape and torture by Libyan militia and denounced the regime for what it was: despotic and despicable. Naturally the press, suddenly awaked, were already be escorted by various Government henchmen. Despite the obvious worsening of the impression it would give, they seized the vulnerable young woman violently. Any member of the media who attempted to help was threatened or assaulted. Sky News had a side arm pointed at them for daring to continue to film.

The Gaddafi thugs then dragged her off into the street; they physically put their hands over her mouth as she exposed the ruling power's vicious lies, rank hypocrisy and murderous intent. She was defamed as drunk, mentally ill, a prostitute. Even if she were any of those it should not alter her human rights. But she was then bundled away into a waiting car and it must be highly doubtful she will be seen by her family again.

For all the plotting over campaign maps and adjustments to the UN backed counter offensive, here is one human example which illuminated the desperate struggle for freedom and free speech which is everyday life in Libya. We do not know what leadership will follow but for now this brutal fear must end.

Shameless

We had no transport yesterday and the little ones wanted to go to the cinema. To my great dismay, I found the County Council had recently dispensed with all Sunday buses from our relatively prosperous town. To me it was just an annoyance - to the elderly it is cutting off a lifeline.

This is just one tiny example of how public services are being lost despite the boast we are the fourth largest economy in the world.

At this weekend's Conservative Spring Conference, Cameron had a chance to show his master strategy of how he intends to lead us boldly out of recession.

His plan is.... to have no plan. His "only strategy" is to pray for a few entrepreneurs and "go-getters" to create a utopian business culture.

Cameron will help business by beating up those officials who insist on pesky planning applications and ensuring health and safety standards for employees. Eventhough they are simply abiding by the law of the land, these damned "bureaucrats" are the "enemies of enterprise" apparently. However I would have thought the banks continued refusal to offer credit was easily business's greatest enemy.

This pointless vituperation was in part warm-up to the Con-Lib budget to be delivered in a few days by Osborne and his compliant Chief Secretary, Danny Alexander (above). The Chancellor used a revealing phrase when he said the budget would be "unashamedly pro-growth" as if a growth strategy could ever be a source of shame. It could only be so when the stronger instinct is simply to cut tax for the wealthy.

As Polly Toynbee said last week in the Guardian, this Coalition's economic experiment "is one last chance to prove Herbert Hoover was right and FDR and Keynes were wrong."

So it would seem the recovery is to be placed in the hands of unfettered capitalism. Even if it yields some success eventually, I can't see much capital incentive for the entrepreneurs to restore the lost public services.

Still no buses, then.

The Naked Truth

"I agree with the Governor of the Bank of England". I admit I do no use these words terribly often. But yesterday Mervyn King, addressing the Treasury Select Committee, acknowledged the savage cuts hitting Britain's public services were ultimately the fault of the City.

He added, using words more usually associated with someone like Ken Livingstone, "the price of this financial crisis is being borne by people who absolutely did not cause it."

So next time a Cabinet Minister blames a pernicious cut back on the "appalling mess we inherited from Labour," remember's King's words.

The latest area of policy to take a hit to the solar plexus is law and order. Home Secretary, Theresa May, suggested in a bright, hopeful manner, the rank and file of HM's Constabulary should take a substantial pay cut. Never mind their mortgages and cost of their children's education.

The interesting timing was to announce the outcome of a consultation on pay a week before it was completed. It's like the referee awarding the game to the home side, as 'they looked like winning anyway'.

Cameron, at PMQs, also justified these destructive cuts to the police by glibly declaring the entire service as "completely inefficient." How to win friends, eh?

At every turn we see the pillars of a civilised and balanced society eroded in the name of wiping out the bank-driven deficit. The crisis may be portrayed as the cause of reckless spending by Labour - but in King, at least we have one Conservative who let slip the great untold truth.

Fools Rush In (Again)

Conflict is, by nature, hard to predict. Over the years the Tories

appear to have made some extraordinary decisions on defence, presumably based on some prophetic sense beyond the powers of other mortals.

In 1981, senior Chiefs warned the cuts to the defence budget by the Conservative Government of the time, would have a direct effect on Britain's capability to engage militarily. Unless it was a nuclear war, of course.

If Argentina's General Galtieri had invaded the Falklands in 1983 rather than 1982 then the Navy would never have been able to construct any kind of 'Task Force' to defend the islands.

There are so many parallels between 1981 and 2011. Already we have seen the pitiful sight of the modern warship, HMS Ark Royal, decommissioned for scrap, a fleet of new Nimrods dismantled and 170 pilots sacked immediately prior to completing their four year's training. That is £4m of investment per pilot just abandoned.

Yesterday, David Cameron was going full throttle on establishing a 'no-fly zone' over Tripoli despite clear US reservations. Such a military strategy needs enforcing with aircraft and personnel but today the MOD announced a further 2,700 RAF redundancies and the loss of two squadrons of Tornadoes. We face the perverse outcome of some troops returning from Helmand getting their service medals together with their P45s.

Afghanistan aside, there is a wider strategic issue - these cuts mean the UK will not be able to respond to many, as yet, unforseeable conflicts. If Kosovo were to have happened now then we would not have been able to contribute let alone lead.

For a party which constantly drapes itself in the flag, the Tories have funny way of showing they are patriots.

Bad Medicine

Page two of the Guardian today was an advert from British Gas to explain why it was "good for our customers" they increased profits by 24 percent to £724m.

Pointless supporting statistics included the £700m paid by their employees in tax which translated into English means " we employ a lot of people and like everyone else they pay tax on their income." Hardly a boast.

But there is a wider problem than the mere profiteering during a recession and a hard winter. Fuel prices are feeding inflation which means interest rates are bound to rise in the near future. Other inflationary pressures are coming from food where speculators have found a whole new market to play with.

A raise in interest rates would be corrective action to dissaude over-spending. However gas, petrol and potataoes are not luxuries we can easily dispense with. Spending in these areas would be largely unaffected if rates went up one, two or three points. But households' disposable incomes would be severely hit and would drive the economy faster and deeper back into recession.

Osbourne as Chancellor has a strong 'laissez-faire' instinct and would not seek to rein in the capitalist zeal of complanies like British Gas. In fact immediately prior to the big crash he was calling on banking regulation to be cut. But it is the irresponsible profiteers of industry and the City which is driving the economy into the ditch and George is just letting them do it.

Pour Encourager Les Autres

I have yet to hear one journalist or political analyst claim they had long predicted a wave of revolutionary protest in the Arabic world. What started in Tunisia has swept through several countries in North Africa and the Gulf; it is hard to imagine it would even be possible before the internet.

The violence prior to the overthrow of Mubarak in Egypt was relatively minor given the intransigence of the President and the pivotal role of the army. Mubarak must have been conscious of how violent repression broadcast to the wider would be ultimately self-defeating.

Libyan despot Gaddafi has no such qualms. All foreign journalists are banned and would have a very short life expectancy if they dared enter Libya. The state media promised a "violent and thunderous" response. Murderous would have been a more appropriate description. http://bcc.in.fsecvd/

There are now reports the army have been using mortars on protestors around Benghazi. Hand-held cameras show marchers walking into a hail of bullets.

Whether this erratic dictator is remotely concerned with the reaction from other African countries it is imposible to say. The West has zero leverage, certainly. He overthrew King Idris in 1969 and how the people would yearn for a regime such as that again.

Usually the state propaganda blames "foreign influence" for inspring the protests. Gaddafi has been forced to deploy mercenries to quell the protests killing scores of innocents. One doctor said there 200 bodies at her hospital alone.

Under the threat of a massacre, the people have every right to arm themselves against this brutal unyielding suppression.

This is Total BS

It must be at least a year since Cameron has been bringing up the Big Society like some obsessive. And still he cannot find the few words of narrative to explain to the public what it is, let alone how it works or how does it mean for me?

Ed Milliband has slowly improved in the weekly duels with PM and it helps him that the only clear linking issue for the BS is the huge cuts in community funding. Manchester Council announced this week how it would save £109m this year - by closing 36 Sure Start nurseries, 20 youth centres, sport centres, swimming pools and also five libraries.

Cameron, on the issue of libraries, blithely ignored the 25% reduction in central funding for LAs and said such cuts were "political motivated by Labour Councils" adding "I see no reason why they should not continue a well-funded network of libraries." Milliband knows every LA, whatever their politics, will face these impossible decisions, if he keeps his calm the political momentum will just come to him.

On Newsnight on Monday night, the BS Minister, Francis Maude continually let all other members of the panel interupt him. His newly discovered good manners was simply because after his short brief ran out he had nothing left to say. His exhausted response of blaming Labour is wearing very thin, especially when new figures revealed the cost of the bank bailout to us, the taxpayer, was £131Bn. That is the reason we are losing our public services and why we will have a shrinking society.

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About five years ago, my employer was making a big push on volunteering as something of a forerunner of PM Dave's big idea. I had missed the main presentation but was compelled with another colleague to attend a second meeting. After half an hour's Powerpoint about fishing shopping trolleys out canals, we had the Q and A. The young, super keen presenter asked us both what we might contribute. I said I had three children aged between one and eight and that took all my spare time. The other chap said he was sole carer for his 90 year-old mother who suffered with dementia.

The eagerness from the presenter dried up instantly. I confess I rather enjoyed his discomfort and the silence which followed.