And so it begins

I've been predicting it for a couple of years now, but the main event of the "recession" is about to get under way. Strikes, chaos and disorder are already taking a grip in Europe - especially France - and here the coalition is about to announce the scale of the cuts to public sector spending as they attempt to get to grips with the debt monster created by the stupidity and profligacy of Blair, Brown and New Labour.

The non-existent recovery is stuttering to a halt while the banks and foreign companies feast on the entrails of our dying industry like vultures devouring a once proud lion that still breathes, but no longer has the strength to fight off the beaks and claws that tear at its flesh.

The unions are on the rise once more - boosted by membership from the bloated non-productive public sector of people in non-jobs - and are belligerent and confident once more. What is more they are now armed with a tactic - the repeated one or two day strike - which causes the most harm and disruption to the employers and the public with the least inconvenience to themselves and their members.

Our armed forces will soon be no longer fit for the purpose of defending the nation - although I'm not convinced that they have been for twenty years - but it doesn't matter. We've sold our nation to the EU anyway and the only thing our soldiers are likely to be doing in the next ten years is putting down internal insurrection and civil chaos. They won't need tanks, planes or aircraft carriers to do that.

And all this as a result of spending cuts that will do nothing to stop the inevitable. This isn't the end of the cuts, the chaos and disruption - this is merely the beginning.

Avoiding the answer

As the inquest in to the 7/7 atrocity begins you can be sure of one thing.

It won't be anything to do with Islam or Moslems.

They'll blame poor communications between various organisations.

But it won't be anything to do with Islam or Moslems.

The police and security services will come in for criticism.

But it won't be anything to do with Islam or Moslems.

They'll probably find that there were failings by government.

But it won't be anything to do with Islam or Moslems.

They'll probably even manage to criticise the transport infrastructure and providers.

But it won't be anything to do with Islam or Moslems.

It never is.

Missing the point

With its usual display of bias and total lack of impartiality, BBC Breakfast this morning was featuring a item asking why are women leaving it later to get married. They trotted out the usual suspects as reasons - focus on career, more opportunities, travel etc. - and totally ignored the obvious answer.

I'll tell you why women aren't getting married until they are into their thirties on average .... blokes aren't asking them to get married anymore. They don't need to. You see, young men are driven by testosterone - they want fast cars, adrenalin surge excitement and sex .... lots and lots of sex. Thirty years ago they couldn't get fast cars, adrenalin surges generally came from football and fairground rides and the only way they could get lots and lots of sex was if they got married.

These days you can buy a fast car for peanuts (though they can't afford to insure it - but when the penalty for not having insurance is barely a tenth of the cost of a years insurance, why bother?), adrenalin rush sports are cheap and plentiful and young men can find plenty of women willing to provide for their sexual urges without commitment.

So they don't need to get married. Instead, young men extend their adolescence well into their twenties and even beyond in a guilt and responsibility free social environment. But the BBC doesn't get that point.

Sunday biites

Just a couple of quickies.

Pro Choice

Just listened to another tedious debate about abortion with the usual stupid feminist claptrap about wimmins choice taking the lead.

For what it's worth - I'm pro choice. Women can say no to sex or they can say yes to sex. That is the choice they make - after that they live with the consequences of their decision.

Principles of Law

Just read that the ludicrous left wing hack, Evan Davis, got in a tizzy when Lord Young, talking about health and safety, said that if he wanted to do something stupid and broke his leg skiing then that was his choice.

Davis then asked, stupidly, what the difference in principle was between skiing and smoking a spliff. Simple, Evan - it's not illegal to ski.

Honestly, don't they teach these lefties anything any more? How on earth did someone that dumb and so biased ever get on to the BBC - oh wait, of course, I forgot that is actually a requirement of the BBC these days.

Boots on the ground

It's thirty years too late, but at last their is an acknowledgement from the police that their retreat from the streets has been disastrous for Britain. Or rather, there has been an acknowledgement from the man who inspects the police that this is the case - from what I've heard so far from the police themselves is the usual denial that there is a problem or, if there is, that it is their problem.

For me, this is one of the most frustrating things about the modern police force - not so much their inability to tackle the problems of crime and disorder or even the inability to recognise that the problems exist and are theirs to deal with. It is the constant denial that the problems of crime and disorder that we face as a society come as a result of deliberate decisions and policies made by the police themselves and their refusal to accept that those decisions and policies have failed - completely.

If the police were ready to admit their failings and the disastrous consequences of past policy decisions I could accept their current inability to deal with the problem of crime and, particularly, disorder. At least we would know they are, at last, getting serious about dealing with them. But they are not. They are still tied to the idea of the police being a primarily reactive force rather than a visible deterrent.

Part of the problem lies in the fact of creeping "newspeak" which infects modern Britain. Rather than calling disorder what it is - disorder - we label it now as "anti-social behaviour" and the police believe that anti-social behaviour is a problem for local councils, not the police. But they are wrong. Anti-social behaviour is just the pseudo-intellectual way of saying disorder but using more words - the common mark of modern jargon infested language - and the mission of the police is to PREVENT crime AND disorder.

Please note those words - "prevent" and "and". When Sir Robert Peel laid down his nine principles of policing these were the words he used to sum up the mission of the police force. They are not there to simply to detect or react to crime - although these are also important requirements - their main purpose is to prevent crime taking place and to bring order where disorder reigns.

This can not be done from the confines of a CCTV room or a tin box on wheels whizzing past at 30 miles per hour. CCTV can be fooled by a simple device known as a "hood" or a "hat" and everyone who has ever been either a passenger or a driver of car knows how hard it is to assess what is going on around them from a moving vehicle. No matter how hard you try to keep your eyes on the houses or the pavements your eyes are inevitably drawn back to looking straight out in front through the windscreen.

What is more, being inside a moving vehicle or a CCTV control room prevents police officers from having contact with the people they are supposed to be protecting and policing preventing them from making the connections which will reassure people and provide the intelligence that the police need. Attending monthly or even weekly meetings with the same bunch of community activists - many of whom have personal agendas and motivations - is not going to provide that connection.

The inspector of constabulary said that resolving this problem will require "boots on the ground" and that is the only way it can be solved - by proper police officers patrolling neighbourhoods on their feet by pounding a beat. It works. It is proven to work and it is the only way we will ever tackle the problems of crime and disorder that blight Britain today.

Where are they now?

Just been watching BBC Breakfast talking to one of the stars of the new British film "Made In Dagenham" which is about the strike by women workers at Ford's Dagenham plant in the nineteen seventies. The strike was about the women wanting to be classed as semi-skilled workers rather than unskilled and the higher pay that would bring and led, eventually, to the introduction of the Equal Pay Act, allegedly.

Now, it's all very well "celebrating" this landmark strike, but the question is - where are all those jobs now? Ford don't make cars in Britain - let alone Dagenham anymore. Those female strikers may have struck a blow for women's rights, but they also struck a blow to the future of British manufacturing.

And yet, this fairly significant point seems to have been missed by the liberal media who are so busy telling us what a great thing this was that they've forgotten that the eventual result was that those women - and future generations of women no longer have the opportunity to work at Ford's Dagenham plant.

Service versus services

Seeing how Britain has decided to put such great faith in the service industry and abandon any pretence or hope of ever being a nation that makes things itself again, you'd think that at the very least we would be good at providing a service.

We aren't. Shop assistants - if you can ever find one in some of bigger chain stores - are often unhelpful and frequently rude. I've lost count of the number of times I've bought something from a shop and they haven't even bothered to say please or thank you as I hand over my cash - let alone call me "sir".

But worse even than that are the banks. I've been banking with the same bank since I got my first monthly salaried job in 1978. I don't want much from my bank - I just want to be able to pay my salary in, pay the odd bill here and there and take money out when I need it. However, I get bombarded with circulars from my bank telling me about the multitude of services they offer - loans, overdrafts, credit cards, travel insurance, mortgages, home insurance - none of which I require. I keep telling them that I don't require these services, but every month they send me more circulars offering me these services that I do not want.

And yet, earlier this week I dared to use the internet to pay a bill - a fairly large bill. There's more than enough money in the account to pay the bill so I knew there wouldn't be a problem - but I've since had numerous calls and discussions with their "fraud" investigation people regarding it. I confirmed straight away that the transaction was genuine - but it's been cancelled by this fraud investigation unit twice now.

I've had to make half a dozen phone calls to half a dozen different people in half a dozen different departments - none of whom have the slightest idea about what I've talked to the others about or even what those departments are doing - to resolve the issue, but finally the bill has been paid - a day late, which didn't please the recipient!

This is the problem with our so called "service" industry - they mistake offering lots of services with offering a service. All I want is for my bank to do what I ask of them when I ask them - and if I want anything else, I want someone who know me and knows my account history to talk to about it. I don't want them to offer lots of services - I just want them to do the basic requirements of what I need properly and efficiently. If they can't do that then they are failing in the basic rudiments of being a service - regardless of how many "services" they offer.

Revising history

First of all, thanks to everyone for their best wishes and supportive comments. Mrs Stan remain very unwell, but is making progress albeit slowly. Sometimes it's two steps forward and one step back - sometimes it's one step forward and two back - but there are occasional glimpses of the woman I married starting to show through. It's been particularly hard on the kids though - it can't have helped that this happened while they were on summer holidays - but they are coping well under the circumstances.

However, rather than dwell on the problems of the Stan household, I'd rather talk about something which is currently happening in Britain. To be honest, I've been rather surprised by it as the sort of thing that is currently taking place is more often put off until a more .... appropriate time. I'm talking about the progressives habit of rewriting history.

Progressives hate Britain. They hate England even more, but essentially they hate anything to do with our country which is not of their making or choosing - and that means anything that happened before progressivism took its death grip on our nations throat - i.e. anything before 1960, roughly speaking.

In particular they despise anything that is positive about Britain or British history. They'd like you to think that everything pre-progressivism was bad - health care was bad, education was bad, inequality was bad, social mobility was bad and so on. Unfortunately for progressives, historical evidence often disputes their depiction of pre-progressive Britain - so what they do is rewrite history to change that view.

It's not that hard to do. All you have to do is wait until everyone who might possibly remember what life was like in the past is dead then get someone to write a book telling the "true" story of the bad old days before we had social liberalism. These books are often based on second or third hand anecdotal evidence - i.e. the thoughts and opinions not of people who were there at the time, but people who knew people who were there at the time - and then published as non-fiction.

As I said, this is easy to do when those who were really there are dead - and even easier if they are long since dead - but it is a little trickier if there are still some who are still alive. Which is why I was surprised last week to find that the task of rewriting the history of WW2 is already in progress - with particular emphasis on transforming the crucial and decisive Battle of Britain into a "folk myth".

Robin Hood is a folk myth. There is no evidence to suggest he ever existed let alone did the things he was supposed to have done - but the Battle of Britain was not only a real event it was a real event captured on film and photograph and which those who were there at the time still remember. Even my mother recalls the time a "Spitfire" downed a "Messerschmidt" near Slough (they may not have been a Spitfire and a Messerschmidt, but to a very young girl every British fighter plane was a Spitfire and every German aeroplane was a Messerschmidt).

Incidentally, even popular folk myths are not immune from progressive revisionism. In its last incarnation on television, Robin Hood was depicted using a Saracen bow rather than the traditional English longbow with the explanation that it was "more powerful". It wasn't. The English longbow was the last word in weaponry back in those days as the French knights of Agincourt would testify (Agincourt itself being subjected to revisionism in recent years). The only advantage of the Saracen bow was that it was easier to use while mounted on a horse due to its shorter length - but there wasn't a chance in hell that someone like Robin Hood would have used one in preference to the English longbow. It would be like a sniper today giving up his telescopic sight equipped long range rifle in preference for a handgun.

Anyway, over the last week I heard and saw various attempts to suggest that the Battle of Britain was neither crucial or decisive or even particularly important in the grand scheme of things that was World War 2 - and the cheerleader of this revisionism was the dear old BBC. Unfortunately for Auntie and the rest of the progressive scum who want to do this country down, there are still sufficient men and women around who were not only alive at the time, but actually took an active part in defending this nation from Nazi tyranny.

This won't stop the progressives, though. They planted the seeds of doubt and over the coming years they will feed and water them. It is the intention of progressives to destroy the Battle of Britain as an icon of our history - it will no doubt be replaced by something more acceptable to the progressive mind set. I don't know what that will be, but it will almost certainly involve women, ethnic minorities or homosexuals. By the time of the hundredth anniversary of the Battle of Britain it will be a celebration of the part played in victory over Nazism by transgendered Moslem immigrants.

One man, two votes

We're supposedly set to learn the date of the referendum on voting reform - a date which every one seems to think is going to be May 5th next year. If anything is likely to put a strain on the coalition love-in then this might be it.

The Tories favour retaining the traditional first past the post system - a one man, one vote form of voting which is simple, transparent and reasonably quick. The Lib Dems favour a proportional system - preferably using a one man, multiple vote system which is complicated, wide open to abuse and fraud and takes ages to deliver a result.

Some people argue that listing your preferred candidates is still one man, one vote - but it isn't. It's a single ballot paper, but each person casts multiple votes on each ballot paper - so there is no way it can be considered as a one man, one vote system.

I've mentioned before that a PR system of voting will completely change the way we do politics in this country and will remove the historic link between constituent and MP. The thing people forget - more than ever following the last election and the "leaders debates" - is that we do not vote for a party or a "leader"; we vote for an individual to represent us at parliament.

Of course, many people just vote for the individual who represents the party they support most - and that is fine - but it still should not detract from the simple fact that by electing a person to represent us at parliament the first past the post system gives us a direct link to governance that a proportional system will not have.

No doubt I'll come back to this in the coming months, but I know I am fighting a losing battle. The media have decided they want voting reform and voting reform we will get. That's probably the most dis-spiriting thing about politics today - that we get what the media (and the broadcast media in particular) decide we will get and not a lot else.

This is why policy decisions are made by leaking possibilities to the media to see what their reaction will be - and why the budget, which used to be so secret that only the Chancellor and a few advisers knew what would be in it right up until he rose to his feet in the Commons, is now common knowledge for days and often weeks in advance.

A futile exercise

I understand the deputy head boy - sorry, Prime Minister - Nick Clegg, is setting up a web site to allow the people of Britain to tell him what laws we want to get rid of.

Why is he doing this? He knows full well that he has no intention of paying the slightest bit of attention to it unless the suggestions coincide with his own particular views - so why bother asking?

Let's say, for example, that millions of people asked for the smoking ban in pubs to be lifted - does anyone think he would do that? I don't.

On top of that, the vast majority of laws which have come into effect over the last decade or so originate from the EU and are passed without any debate, discussion or serious consideration by parliament. They're simply rubber stamped and that's it - because we are not permitted to refuse or repeal them. They are directives - i.e we are directed to introduce them by our political masters in Brussels.

So what would Clegg do about those if people said they wanted to get rid of them? Absolutely nothing - because he can not do anything.

The whole idea reminds me of my school days when the teachers - along with the sixth form prefects - would tell us how they wanted us lower forms (in both senses) to be "more involved" in school decisions. There would be huge enthusiasm for a couple of days, hundreds of suggestions and, at the end of it, the teachers would do what they wanted to do anyway.

Not only does Clegg look like a sixth form collaborator - sorry, prefect - he still behaves and thinks like one too.

And there was me thinking discrimination wasn't allowed

Watching BBC Breakfast this morning I was intrigued by the story of the black councillor who had been prosecuted for "racial harassment" after describing an Asian councillor as a "coconut".

Councillor Shirley Brown was apparently so incensed by the demand of her Asian colleague that, what with money being tight and everything, it would be a good idea to cut spending on council projects for black and Asian people, that she accused her fellow councillor of being a "coconut" - i.e. brown on the outside, but white underneath.

I found this story interesting for two reasons. First of all, I couldn't help wondering why - with incidents and prosecutions for racial incidents involving councillors going on up and down the country all the time - this particular incident was worthy of prime coverage on the BBC Breakfast programme.

The other thing I find interesting is that councils throw money into projects that specifically exclude white people and no one gives a damn.

It seems overt discrimination and blatant racism are acceptable after all.

Did I miss something?

While All the news channels and newspapers are going on about Osborne's "tough" budget cuts, I'm still trying to work out what they heard that I didn't.

Aside from the completely expected rise in VAT and CGT there was little in this budget that put any flesh on the bones of the cuts we are all told to expect. A public sector pay freeze? Well, no doubt the public sector will complain, but let's be honest - this was two years overdue (at least).

Instead the Chancellor has deferred adding any detail on the cuts until October - which makes me wonder why he had this budget now when half the stuff he mentioned was deferred until next year anyway! It looks to me as if this was designed to grab headlines - which it has - and, perhaps more than this, it looks like it was forced by the Lib Dems to push their election pledges.

When it came to actual cuts, there was no detail whatsoever - hardly surprising as the government haven't held their comprehensive spending review yet - but the media have gone mad over the prospect of a 25% cut in public sector spending.

Which wasn't what was said - if I understood it. I thought the Chancellor said the cuts would "average" 25% - not that public sector spending would be slashed by 25%. There is a difference - if you cut the spending of a minor department by 50% and that of a larger department by 1% you'll get an average cut of around 25% - but that won't necessarily slash the combined spending of those two departments by 25%.

If the budget of the first department is £6 billion and the second is £60 billion then you'll save around £3.5 billion pounds off a total spend of £66 billion - which is about 5%. So, although you've cut departmental budgets by an average 25% the actual savings in money terms is only 5% - hardly the sort of thing to solve this crisis.

So, unless I missed something, I'll defer my opinion on whether this is enough to stave off the coming crisis until Osborne actually adds some specifics. So far, all we've got is a paltry few billion pounds worth of cuts which won't make the slightest difference in the long run - or even in the short term.

Time to tighten your belts

The long awaited day has arrived and we will finally learn the details of the coalition government's plan to rescue Britain from the depths of recession and stave off the depression that will engulf this nation for a decade or more if they fail.

Yes, it really is that important. It is, quite probably, the most important budget since the end of the Second World War and we've entrusted it to the boy George Osborne. Personally, I can't think of many people whose hands I would be less inclined to place my fate and that of the nation in - but that's who we've got so we'll just have to hope he's up to it. Perhaps he'll surprise me - I certainly hope so.

However, I've not been impressed with what he has done so far and I'm set to be disappointed again. I expect taxes to go up sharply for most of us and I suspect that a lot of what is introduced will do more harm to our already weak jobs market.

Let's be honest about this. Tinkering around the edges of an economy where jobs are rare and getting rarer isn't going to help much - and those jobs have to be real, productive jobs and not the non-jobs which proliferate in the public sector.

It doesn't matter how much this budget helps reduce the deficit if there is no long term plan to get the millions of Britons off benefits and back to working in the productive sector.

That is the key for the future - making stuff.

Is the message getting through, yet?

As yet another nation distorted by the corrupt and bankrupt policy of multiculturalism collapses into violent, bloody ethnic conflict Central Asia I can not help but wonder whether anyone in Britain is taking note of this.

The first thing to say about the troubles in Kyrgyzstan is that it really isn't any of our business directly. However, what I will say is that the lessons we can learn from this (and from similar previous incidents such as what happened in the Balkans) is that multiculturalism does not work - ever.

Which is why our leaders and politicians are playing a dangerous game by insisting that they can make it work and that it is good for Britain - and they are playing this dangerous game with our nation and the futures of our children and grandchildren.

It should be impossible for them to ignore the evidence that multiculturalism is not just a misguided policy, but a potentially explosive and catastrophic policy - everywhere it is tried the end result is eventually violence and bloodshed. It should be impossible, but somehow they do.

They do because they stupidly deceive themselves that this can not happen here because we are British and its just not the "British way" to do things. That may have been true fifty years ago, but after decades of multiculturalism being imposed on the people of Britain we no longer have a British cultural dominance and we also have an increasing ethnic population who have no attachment to "the British way" of doing things.

We must make our politicians listen to us. Multiculturalism has never worked anywhere and it is stupid to assume that we can make it work in Britain. They have to abandon their belief in this dangerous policy now and abandon it for ever.

Removing the barriers to being a good neighbour

I read something the other day that said that more and more of us don't know our neighbours. Some people might have thousands of "virtual" friends on FaceSpace or MyTwit with whom they will spend hours chatting with, but have never said anything much to their next door neighbour beyond "hello".

I don't know what the reason for this is, but I personally suspect that fences have something to do with it - that and this modern craving for "privacy".

When I was a kid growing up at the family home we lived in an ordinary 3 bedroom semi. When I was young I would play out in the back garden as did the neighbours kids. Between us were the herbaceous borders and a three foot high cross link fence over which we would talk and play - it made a very good net for tennis or badminton.

Consequently, my mum would often spend time chatting with the mum next door while hanging out the washing or just enjoying the garden. They became firm friends and remained so even after the neighbours moved on. This scenario applied to just about every other home I knew or visited - the low fences meant that neighbours knew one another and looked out for one another as well.

When we moved to our current home this also had the standard three foot high cross link wire fence between us and the neighbours. As a result we got to know them and they got to know us, but when they moved out a few years back and the new lot moved in, the first thing they did was install a six foot high wooden fence between us and them (and the other side too). When I asked why they told us it was for "privacy" - what they hell were they planning to do in their garden I wondered, but didn't ask.

As a result we barely talk to one another beyond the odd exchange out front as we pass. As far as I can tell they don't do anything in their garden that requires such "privacy", but their bloody great fence does a great job of blocking out the afternoon sun from my garden. The thing is, just about every home I go to these days has the same six foot high wooden fence between them and the neighbours - so it's hardly surprising that nobody knows their neighbour anymore.

Let's get rid of these bloody great fences between our gardens, install short cross link fences and start chatting with real people who live next door instead of some fat, balding 50 year old pretending to be a 25 year old Brad Pitt look-a-like online.

The song remains the same

I've got to be honest, I know very little about the financial sector or how it is regulated, but the "sweeping" changes being suggested by the Chancellor, George Osborne, don't sound that much different to me.

A powerful new body – the Consumer Protection and Markets Authority – will regulate the conduct of every authorised financial firm providing services to consumers, Mr Osborne said.

Isn't this just the FSA with a different name and a new face? Wasn't regulating the conduct of every authorised financial firm providing services to consumers what the FSA was set up to do? Isn't this just creating new quangos and regulatory bodies stuffed with faceless and unaccountable bureaucrats the same way that New Labour did?

A month into a new government and it is already indistinguishable from the government it replaced. Their ideas are the same as the last government; their way of doing things is the same as the last government and the results will be the same as the last government- hardly surprising as their policies were more or less the same as the last government and the parties now in power share the political ideology of the party last in government.

The band members might have changed, but they are still singing the same old songs.

The blame game

I'm no Obama supporter, but I do feel the criticism of the US President by various sections of the media for his "anti-British" rhetoric is a bit rich.

After all, when Gordon Brown was telling anyone and everyone that the global financial crisis was the Yanks fault they all just seemed to nod along in agreement as if this was an obvious fact (it wasn't and isn't. The global financial crisis was the fault of every western nation - the sub-prime mortgage scam was just the ultimate symptom of a system out of control - and the system is called "globalisation").

Now that the boot is on the other fault and Obama is blaming a British company for the environmental catastrophe that has struck the Gulf Of Mexico the media are getting all huffy about it. Tough luck, guys - you shouldn't live in glass houses if you're gonna go around chucking bricks.

What is unforgivable, however, is for Obama to equate the Gulf oil spill crisis with 9/11.

What was the man thinking of? The attack on the twin towers was a premeditated and carefully planned act of wilful destruction and murder that cost the lives of almost 3000 people. The BP oil platform explosion was an accident - possibly an avoidable, but an accident all the same. There is no comparison - none whatsoever.

Of course BP should pay for clearing up the mess - and they will - but running about pointing fingers and shouting "it's your fault" isn't going to solve anything.

And just with the financial crisis we should all take a good long hard look at ourselves before we point the finger - as someone once said (Bob Marley?), when you point your finger there are three more pointing back at you. You could just as easily blame the US drive for energy independence (and thus the exploiting of offshore oil reserves) for the disaster - and when you boil that down that comes down to each and every one of us who demand cheap and reliable energy supplies.

Of course, I am one of those and I still support that demand for energy independence and cheap and reliable sources of energy (and, believe me, if wind farms could do it I would support them - but they can't so I don't). However, as far as Britain is concerned I believe we should be doing more than we are to exploit our natural coal reserves - estimated at 200 years of readily accessible supplies and a thousand years of harder to reach supplies.

Accidents and disasters happen in coal mines too and, when they do, it is right and proper that there inquiries to ascertain what went wrong, what could have been done to avoid it, how it can be avoided in the future and who is to blame.

None of this is helped by the leaders of any nation going around blaming other nations - whether it is a global financial crisis or an oil spill. If you really feel you must blame something then blame the thing that is really at the root of this - globalisation.

The man who can't make his mind up

A few months ago, Nick Clegg was a nobody in politics. He had very little support from the electorate, not a great deal of support within his own party and it didn't matter much that he seemed incapable of making a decision or statement and sticking to it.

But since the election Clegg has been elevated to a position well beyond that which he deserved after his party's election performance and even further beyond his capabilities. He is, whether he deserves it or is capable of it, the deputy prime minister - for now, anyway.

People in such a position should know what to say and when to say it - and when they say something they should mean it. People in such a position should realise that they are no longer speaking to just their party supporters - they are speaking to and for the people of the country.

So how is it that a week ago Mr Clegg was telling us that the forthcoming cuts will be nothing like those of the Thatcher era (where, in reality, public sector spending actually rose), but is now telling us that savage cuts are necessary if we are to avoid “decades of debt, higher interest rates and fewer jobs"

A week is a long time in politics, but not so long in economics that what you say one week is completely negated by what you say the following week. If he didn't know just how bad things were last week then he should have kept his mouth shut until he did know.

The truth is that Clegg is so far out of his depth he is already looking like a drowning man. He's trying to balance keeping his party supporters on board while dealing with a crisis that will prove that everything he and his party believe in is false. The man has a choice to make and he has to make it soon - does he put his party first or his country?

Given his opinion of Britain from the statements he made before he found himself in a position of power I'm not putting much faith on the latter. When it comes to loyalty Clegg's starts with the EU, followed by his party, followed by various ethnic victim groups - at the bottom of the list for his loyalty is the country which he now finds himself the deputy prime minister of.

You can bet if Clegg had to make the choice between doing what is right for Britain or doing what is right for the eurozone it will be the eurozone every time. If he has to make a choice about what is right for British farmers or Greek tobacco growers it will be the latter.

I'm not sure it is good for Britain to have a man with such dubious loyalty in such a position of authority, but I'm certain it isn't good to have a man in such a position who can't make his mind up when tough decisions have to be made and made quickly and decisively.

Furthering education

A couple of things caught my eye on the news this morning. The first was the suggestion that university tuition fees will have to rise and the second was something about Britain's status as one of the world's leading science and research nations is in decline.

They both caught my eye individually, but the curious thing is that they are, in my opinion, related.

First of all, you would think that with more and more youngsters entering university these days that our science and research traditions would be boosted, wouldn't you? But they are not - and the reason is that, although more and more children go on to university, fewer and fewer are studying degrees of serious academic worth.

The second thing that bothers me - and is something which I've been ranting about for a long time - is the fact that I can not stand the way my generation are depriving future generations of the things we had access to and enjoyed - and one of those was the student grant system. The majority of MPs in parliament who went through university probably did so at a time when students got grants to study - instead of student loans which leave them up to their necks in debt before they even start their careers.

I just don't think it's right that the people who took advantage of a benefit should be the ones who deprive the next generation of that benefit to just suit their own political and personal ambitions.

The truth is that we need to get people into university and get them studying worthwhile degrees that will bring long term benefits to this country - medicine, physics, chemistry, engineering and so on. I think the government should identify a few core degrees such as these, plus a few of the "classics" and offer student grants (not loans and free from tuition fees) for anyone studying these degrees at an approved university.

This will do two things. It will encourage more of the most able people to study degrees that will benefit the nation in the longer term, but have fallen out of favour - and this, in turn, will boost our science and research fields.

If other children want to go and study media studies, pop music or social science then they can have the student loans and pay tuition fees.

I also believe that the whole point of university is to educate the brightest and the best - and the sad fact is that, in any society, the brightest and the best is unlikely to be much more than 30% of the population - so that should be the benchmark target for children going on to university.

Of course I want to see the other 70% of children getting further education when they leave school - but I think that is best served through a combination of technical colleges, incentivized employer sponsorships and day release - not state financed mickey mouse degrees.

Use it or lose it

I don't have much time for squatters or their proclaimed rights - but I have even less time for those people who leave buildings abandoned and unoccupied for years either.

At a time when there is increasing pressure to expand into green belt land to provide housing for our rapidly expanding population (it doesn't need to be rapidly expanding and the reason it is is almost entirely due to immigration - but that's a whole different rant) it is nothing short of a national scandal that there are hundreds of thousands of empty homes in Britain today.

Having said all that, I can completely understand why people do leave them unoccupied and abandoned - particularly if they are in prime locations such as town centres. I know of two instances reasonably local to me where the owners of a property on a large piece of prime real estate have left that site unused and abandoned for a decade or more - both were previously business sites.

They left them like that because the local council would not allow them to develop the land the way the land owners wanted to develop the land. The local councils wanted them to remain as business sites while the land owners wanted to build large blocks of luxury flats. Both sites were recently given the go ahead and one now has a humongous square lump of a building that more resembles a prison block than a luxury condo while the other is set to be developed into more luxury flats.

Of course, that's not the only reason such sites get left abandoned and empty. For some inexplicable reason, buildings that are left unoccupied get a discount on business rates - 75% I believe.

This has got to be the most stupid and self-defeating rule ever in the history of town planning. The last thing any town wants is to have its lucrative business areas not contributing to their full potential. Not only are they losing out on the business rate taxation, but they are losing out on jobs and the income that those jobs will generate.

Furthermore, if a prospective employer is looking at your town as somewhere to base their business in they won't be much impressed with rows of abandoned offices and industrial units. If anything, business units that are left unoccupied should attract an increase in business rates to make up for the loss that they would otherwise bring in - I would suggest double the rate.

This would encourage landlords to get tenants in as quickly as possible rather than leave these units abandoned and unoccupied. They might have to drop the rental a little, but better to have the property earning some money.

I also think that there should be a "use it or lose it" policy for any empty building or site. By that, I mean that once a council has identified a property as being unused they should issue the owner a notice that they have two years to submit an acceptable planning proposal or get that site occupied or the property/site will fall into council ownership.

I know that sounds draconian - and it is - but I would also expect councils to be more flexible on their planning consents. As long as the planning proposal isn't for a fifteen storey mega casino with attached brothel and nuclear reprocessing plant then they should allow the landowners to do pretty much whatever they want with their land - except leave it vacant.