Across the pond

In a last minite desparate attempt to stem the LibDem tide, both Conservatives and Labour attempted to blow Nick Clegg out of the water by blasting his defence policy, and notably his clear statement in the television debates that he would not order a replacement for Trident, before considering other options,  out of the water. Both parties are trying to type Clegg as a naive peacenik, who who cannot be trusted with the defence of the realm.

The Conseravatives led the charge of this Heavy Brigade, with a carefully orchestrated Letter to The Times, from a not-random selection of retired defence chiefs and military intelligence experts. Thanks to its owner Rupert Murdoch, this particular reader’s letter, was deemed the main news story of the day, and took up nearly all of the Times front page.  Here is the headline and the first two pars.

Security chiefs condemn Lib Dem defence ‘gamble’

Nick Clegg’s credibility on national security is called into question today by senior defence and intelligence figures.

Writing to The Times, they said that Liberal Democrat policies risked leaving Britain exposed to terrorism and diminished on the world stage.

Not to be outdone, Labour propelled Lord Gilbert, a defence minister in the first Tony Blair government (helped into power by Rupert Murdoch, who embarced New Labour, but is now backing Tory Boy).

Gilbert, like the nation’s security chiefs, came out of retirement, aged 93,  to denounce the callow youth Clegg, for his ‘frivolous’ policies. This is the BBC report of what he said. (I heard it, but since I was eating my lunch at the time, I did not take notes!)

And Lord Gilbert, a former Labour defence minister, told BBC Radio 4′s World at One programme he was so concerned about the “frivolous” attitude of the Lib Dems to the “defence of the realm” he advocated tactical voting against them.

I don’t think there’s any doubt where their choice would fall. It would have to be the ConservativesLord Gilbert Labour peer

“It will be up to individual Labour voters to decide, if they are in constituencies where they think their vote is going to be wasted because the Labour party is in third place, I think they ought to vote for the party which, in their view, is going to be most responsible in terms of defence of the realm.

“I don’t think there’s any doubt where their choice would fall. It would have to be the Conservatives if the choice is purely between the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats.”

Expect more of this in the next two days from both parties. Clegg is a  decent honest chap, but he is naive, liable to be soft on the nuclear threat, soft on terrorism (amnesty for illegal immigrants!). Playing on the fears of the electorate.  Remember the election front page against Kinnoch in Murdoch’s Sun, ‘Will the last person to leave Britain please turn off the lights? ’

In the last TV debate both Cameron and Brown scored points off Clegg on Trident, and both of them managed to imply that Clegg was the newcomer to the political scene, who just did not understand the realities.

The plain fact is that none of the three party leaders is strong on the nuclear detterent, foreign policy or defence. They rely on their advisers. Brown’s adviser on nuclear proliferation has been Baroness Shirley Wiliams, which job she took on after she retired as leader of the LibDems in the House of Lords. (Shirley is 89, but far from retired. Amongst other things she sits on an august international commission, which is actually working to reduce the world’s stock of nuclear weapens.)  And, as I discovered today she is far better informed on US politics, 2010, than  Cameron or Brown or all those retired defence chiefs.

Because she moved to the US 22 years, to take up a post at Harvard, the US equivalent of Oxbridge, so she has first hand experience of the America of both Bushes, both Clintons and, most importantly, Barack Obama. By happenstance I was able to secure an ‘exclusive face to face interview’ with Williams today.

Which I will report on in my next blog tomorrow.

Remember, UK voters, it was David Cameron, who challenged Gordon Brown to have TV debates. Brown, who was then facing cabinet revelts about his leadership, agreed to them. He also agreed to Sky Television, part of Rupert Murdoch’s media empire, as being host to one of those debates.

This decision, shows Brown’s weakness at the time, when many of his own cabinet colleagues, were urging him to stand down and pass on the leadership to the next generation. It also shows Brown’s belief that it was the Sun, who brought Tony Blair to power. It totally ignored the fact that it was the Murdoch media in the US, which launched the most racist slurs against Obama in the US election. Murdoch’s Fox Television pullled every dirty trick in the book to try and get Obama elected.

Nevertheless Brown agreed that one of the TV debates should be hosted by Sky Television, which urges viewers to pay for television. Mostly Murdoch viewers watch sport or sex, in which Murdoch press and television excels. He chose Sky, against such channels as Channel Four, which is available to viewers who do not pay any money at all to television tycoons like Murdoch.

The first TV debate attracted an audience of 9 million. And it changed the agenda for this election, because it showed a surge for Clegg and the Lib Dems. The second debate on Sky, on which my verdict was a draw for all three candidates, did not change this polll verdict.

Unsurprisingly, because the Sky debate attracted only 4 million viewers. The ITV audience was swelled, because it followed Coronation Street. And television research shows that a lot of viewers don’t swicth channels. They  continue to watch the channel they are tuned into.

Viewers interested in serious politics do not usually tune into the Murdoch channels.Viewers love his sports coverage, and the men of the family love his sexy stuff. But politics is boring.

The third TV debate is hosted by the BBC,  with its verteran presenter David Dimbleby in charge. Dimbleby is veteran of running programmes, which give a voice to ordinary members of the public. But he is also a deeply conservative personality. Like his father, Richard Dimbeby, he sees stable governments as those who respect the monarchy as underlying the Brithish constitution.

What he will do on the night I am not sure. He might behave, like Alastair Stuart in the first TV debate. Follow the rules scrupously, Or he might, like Adam Boulton, act according to his own imperatives.

Which are  Conservative rather than Labour. And which are that our two party system brings ‘strong’ government, whereas coalitions mean instability.

And though David Cameron is pledged to bring the BBC into line if he gets power, he knows that Cameron will not urge David Dimbeby, now well over nomal BBC retirement age, to retire to look after his garden. Because, of course, his personal politics, are not in any way left-wing.

The fact that he is still there as BBC polical star, should be evidence enough, that the Tory press repeated slur that the BBC is a left-wing conspiracy is not backed by the evidence.

The bully boys of the two parties who have been governing Britain since the Daily Novelist, now 76, reached voting age, today were beating their big drums to the same tune. We all know that Brown is a bully, because one of the stars of The Observer, one of the few newspapers that is not Tory dominated, told us in a much publicised book publishhed just before the election campaign started. Andrew Rawnsley made a convincing case. Not too difficult, because Brown has, like Blair before him, has moved Britain towards presidential style government.

But today’s attack on Clegg, was led by the gentleman Tory, David Cameron, who has eschewed the doctrinaire veries of the Thatcherite Tories, and, who claims, he wants, us, the electorate to govern the country. So long as we decide to appoint him to decide what it is we want.

Today Cameron blasted Clegg, for holding the country to ransom by demanding electoral reform, as the price for his co-operation with any other party. Brown jumped on the bandwagon, by attacking Clegg  for ‘arrogance’.

Both of them assume that the surge to the Liberal Democrots after the first television debate was due to the personality of Nick Clegg, rather than Lib Dem policies.

Which is a pretty contemptuous view of the electorate. It suggests that British people changed their voting intentions, because Clegg won some sort of popularity contest in the first TV debate.

Two issues dominate this debate. First the continuing anger of the electorate at abuse of public trust by MPs of all parties, revealed by the Daily Telegraph exposure. Second, and now much more important, the devastating worldwide recession, caused by the self-seeking arrogance of the world’s bankers and other big companies.

These same bankers, many of whom have been bailed out by Gordon Brown, are now awarding themselves huge bonuses yet again. While all three parties are warning that because of the cost to Britain’s debt in bailing them out, Government spending will have to be reduced, which means that lots of workers in the public sector will lose their jobs.

Cameron argues that only he will have the confidence of the business sector, which, he thinks, will create the jobs to rescue our economy. But he is singing to the tune of the wealthy private sector, so he goes into this election, with much more money than Labour, despite trade union donations, and far more than the Lib Dems, who have less money for election posters, than UKIP, a small party, which is supported by a few very rich men.

Three weeks ago, most polical journalists, and most politicians, were assuming, that the electorate would vote in a Cameron government. Now the polls are suggesting that the most likely outcome is a parliament in which no party has an overall majority.

But maybe, that is exactly what the electorate wants.

They don’t trust Gordon Brown, because he has colluded with big business leaders, most notably, Rupert Mucdoch, who helped New Labour to get into government. They don’t trust David Cameron, because his party is the party of big business, which has got us into the current international recession.

The subject of the last debate is the economy. The odds are heavily against Nick Clegg, who can be slammed as a man of no experience of these vital matters. Gordon Brown, who, despite his faults, is a former Chancellor of the Exchequer, who does understand the complexities. And who has mostly done the right things to minimise the adverse effects on the UK. David Cameron can come in as the architect of change.

His line is that the Conservatives will do it better. Cameron himself is not strong on econamics. His potential Chancelor of the Exchequer is so inadequate, that he has been silenced by the bully boys of Conservative Central Office. George Osborne is still alive and not ill. But Central Office has been bringing back that anti-Thatcherite Tory veteran, Kenneth Clarke, to push their economic case.

Cameron is not, by personality a bully boy. And bully boy tactics will not help him one iota in the last debate.

The subject is the economy. Gordon Brown should win this with a resounding majority. Because the plain fact he is the only one of the three leaders, who has a deep understanding of economics, and the practical experience of managing the UK economy, first as Tony Blair’s Chancellor of the Exchequer, and more recently as Prime Minister. Nick Clegg has no such expertise. He will have to rely on his shadow Chancellor, Vince Cable, who demonstrated that he would be a good Chancellor.

But he won’t be in the studio. Brown can run rings around him on economics.

But Cameron is on a very sticky wicket. He has no better economic understanding than Clegg, and he is suffering from the fact that his shadow chancellor, Osborne, is such a disaster, that Conservative Central Office, has shut him up.

The debates are only one influence on the election. Cameron wanted them. The complicated rules were drawn up after negotiation by all parites.

They were adhered to in the first debate, which, contrary to all expectation, Clegg won.

They were not adhered to in the second debate. When the Sky presenter, Adam Boulton, asked a question himself, about the ‘revelations’ is the Daily Telegraph about Nick Clegg. Boulton’s pay cheque comes from Sky Television, which is controlled by Rupert Murdoch. He is a decent honest journalist, but his heart is not only with his paymaster, Rupert Murdoch, it is also with his partner, Anji Hunter, who was one of the most trusted aides of  Tony Blair.

According to The Guardian,over a  hundred viewers protested about this. No word from the regulator. And still no word from the Press Complaints Commission, about the slurs the Tory press has printed about Clegg. 

The last debate is being conducted by the BBC, so it should be fair.

But it is being conducted by a human being, who may not be perfect, just as the BBC is not perfect.

Subject of next blog.

Despite all the rules, and the massive figure of Sky’s Adam Boulton pushing the leaders on to the next question just as the big punches were being thrown, the election remains the most thrilling race in town. The Guardian decided it was a narrow win for Clegg. Most of the Tory press talked up one poll which showed Cameron back in the lead.

My own verdict was that it was a clear draw. Brown looked more confident, Cameron less of a wimp, but Clegg was taking their punches, standing tall with one hand in his pocket most of the time. The poll experts say the average of the polls shows the Lib Dems and the Conservatives level at 33 per cent with Labour on 29 per cent.

How reliable all these snap polls are is an open question. But no evidence has emerged to fault my own gut feeling. What was unthinkable a week ago is still a reality.

This is a three horse race.

Clegg, who was branded a Nazi sympathiser by the Daily Mail at breakfast time and that he was anti-American by Brown during the debate, stuck to his guns on nuclear defence strategy. His call for a rethink over Polaris looks rational rather than foolish. Why does Britain need its own mini nuclear force, when France and Germany manage without? How does our clinging to being a nuclear power help in persuading countries like Iran that they should not go nuclear to defend their people?

Brown’s anti-American jibe might have carried some weight had George W Bush still been in the White House. But on both nuclear strategy and tackling  the big banks, Lib Dem policies are closer to those of Barack Obama than either of the other two parties.

The odds against the Lib Dems topping the popular poll are still very long. In the last two weeks they can expect further attacks from the press. Which should not be discounted. Mud sticks.

But it is worth remembering that this particular LibDem revival has had no help from the press at all. Labour has been able to rely on the support of the Daily Mirror  and, when he felt like, has been given the support of the Murdoch papers. The old Liberal Party post-war had the support of The News Chronicle, until it was taken over by the Daily Mail in the 1950s. It had the support of The Guardian when it was the Manchester Guardian. In the 1980s The Guardian staff was split right down the middle, between support for Labour and snupport for the alliance of the Liberals and the Social Democrats.

In recent years The Guardian has been clearly, but not un-critically Labour. In the last few  days it has been showing signs of returning to its Liberal roots.

 C. P. Scott must be dancing in his grave.

On the day of the second television debate our predominantly right wing press did their worst to totally discredit Nick Clegg, the leader of the Liberal Democrats, which since last Thursday, have surged in the opinion polls to equal ranking with Labour and the Conservatives. Leading the pack, unsurprisingly was the Daily Mail, which wins top marks for conduct unbecoming of a democratic free press.

This is their headline and standfirst that took up two thirds of the front page.

CLEGG IN NAZI SLUR ON BRITAIN

Our delusions of grandeur are greater cross to bear than German guilt over Nazis. We need to be put back in our place, says the Lib Dem leader.

You have to turn the page and follow the story inside to discover, that this quote was taken from an article he wrote for The Guardian in 2002. And, of course, if you read the original article, which The Guardian has put up on its web site, you discover that what he said has  been distorted and taken entirely out of context. But the Daily Mail does not report what he says. It uses the space to print the views of Tory MP Nicholos Soames, Churchill’s grandson, in reaction to the quote the Mail read to him. Soames danced to the Daily Mail tune. Here is what he said.

These views will disgust people the length and breadth of the country. They show that Nick Clegg unfit to lead his party, let alone the country. They are an insult to the memory of Britain’s war dead……..

The 2002  article was written to combat what Clegg saw as British prejudice against the new democratic Germany. It was provoked by the behaviour of his school mates from the Westminster public school on a visit to Germany.  This is how it started.

I still cringe when I remember what happened on the school bus. The shame of it still lingers.We were all travelling together – a class of 17-year-olds from my school and our German “exchange” partners – on an excursion to the Bavarian mountains. The German teenagers had already endured a month at our school in central London. Now it was our turn to spend a month in Munich, living with our “exchange” families and attending the local school.

A boy called Adrian started it. He shouted from the back of the coach, “we own your country, we won the war”. Other boys tittered. One put a finger to his upper lip – the traditional British schoolyard designation for Hitler’s moustache – threw his arm out in a Nazi salute, and goose-stepped down the bus aisle. Soon there was a cascade of sneering jokes, most delivered in ‘Allo ‘Allo German accents.

I remember two things vividly. First, none of the girls in my class joined in. It seemed to be a male thing. Second, the German schoolchildren did not appear angry, or even offended. That was what was so heart wrenching. They just looked confused, utterly bewildered. To a generation of young Germans, raised under the crushing, introspective guilt of postwar Germany, the sight of such facile antics was simply incomprehensible.

Clegg’s experiences matched my own on my first visit to Germany as an 18-year-old in 1952, when I first got to know Germans of my own age, who were struggling to come to terms with the Nazi atrocities and trying to build a new Germany. 

 

Nick Clegg, the Lib Dem donors and payments into his private account

CLEGG ON HIS FACE

‘Lib Dem in new donor storm’ proved to be a rehash of the Telegraph story.

‘Accused of Afghan wan U-turn’   and ‘Baffled by own migrant policy’ produced nothing new either.

In the dream I had just woken up and had decided the first task of my day was to update my contact book. I typed in a few telephone numbers I had written down in my diary into my phone. Then I  thought that it would save time  if I typed the new stuff into my computer and synched it to my phone later.  The next instant I was fully awake. No longer dreaming and with the full realisation that if I was going to type in to the computer I would have to get out of bed and go downstairs. By this time I wanted to write about dreaming.  Explaining that seamless moment between sleeping and waking. Explaining how the unconscious mind works. This was an urrgent, perhaps important task, because the scientists cannot produce this kind of truth.

This was far more important than updating my contact book. In one part of my mind I felt like jumping out of bed immediately. I had certainly had enonugh snleep  because the dawn sunshine was visible through a crack in the curtains. But I did not move an inch. Another part of my mind held me down quite as effectively as if I was strapped down in a straight jacket. This conflict provaked a number of thoughts and feelings in a few seconds. Doubts that any anecdotal evidence could have any value compared to the findings of peoplre who had spent much of their working lives studying dreams. I was setting myself an impossible task. And at a time I was too old and not well enough to accomplish it.

Just one more grandiose fantasy the shrinks would say.

Before I could even move, let alone get out of bed, I had to answer these internal critics. So here goes. This is part of the answer that came into my mind in the next second or two.

If I was in a sleep laboratory, the electrodes attached to my head, would maybe  have shown a small change in my brain wave patterns, at that instant, when I moved from dreaming, controlled by my uncscious mind, to total mental alertness. And if I was in a sleep laboratory I would only have been able to write down a small part of my dream content and my waking thoughts.

What scientisrts get in sleep laboratories is truth, but far from the whole truth, about the mind, which is a far  more complex organism than the latest giant computer.

But, although I am now out of bed, sitting at my computer, the doubts stream in again.  What I have written thus far simply confirms, what most scientists and sceptical journalists will think when they read this blog. Revealing myself as just a dreamer, avoiding the real work, which I am fully qualified to do,  political journalism, at this time, which nearly all politicians and journalists believe, is the most uncertain and important UK general election of their lifetime.

Worse than that it has taken me nearly two hours to write this not very interesting account of a rather boring dream. Two hours in which my reasoning mind has supplied many arguments against writing about dreams. Two hours in which I have been wracked by my morning smoker’s cough.

Which I should not go on about, because it further destroys my credibility. As I know from an email sent by my neighbour across the road, the latest research study, accourding to the Daily Express, demonstrates that smokers are less intelligent than non-smokers.

The voice of reason tells me that writing about dreaming is foolish. It also suggests that writing about UK politics at this time, when every news organisation in the country has teams of their best reporters, plus other distinguished commenators, filling pages of print, hours of air time, and millions of blogs.

Reason tells me I should take a rest. Only faith enables me to finish this short blog. Which means that I use religious language. But my faith is not faith in God. It is not ‘trusting your instincts’  or ”following your hunches’. Not even ‘thinking things out for yourself”.

What faith is not, is much easier to say, than what it is. Which is maybe more like what the Bible calls ‘seeing through a glass darkrly’.

Or to switch religions and take a cue from Islam, from the Edward Fitzgerald translation of Omar Khayyam, who was a great poet as well as a great astronomer and mathematician.

“The moving finger writes, and have writ, moves on.’

Trust not in God. Do not become enslaved by your mind. Let your fingers do the work and tell the story.

Not the best time to write in defence of God, and particularly the Christian God. Easter has been marred this year by the spectacle of the Roman Catholic church once more getting its casocks in a twist. The Pope in his Easter message referred to the ‘idle gossip’ about his church. According to Catholic beliefs he is the supreme human being with infallible powers to interpret the word of Jesus Christ, and his father in heaven.

The ‘idle gossip’, to which the Pope referred, were the stories that have been carried by the world’s media, about those Roman Catholic priests, who have abused the little boys, and some of the little girls, in their flock. Not idle gossip but the personal testimony of their parishioners, speaking out many years after the event, encouraged by the publicity, to speak out many years after the events which marred their childhood.

The Vatican defence of the present Pope is that thoughout his career, he was working on the inside against such practices, quietly and without publicity. Which he probably was. But only those within the closed society of the tiny Vatican state, could believe that this is a sensible message to broadcast to the media. To those outside, it seems much the same mindset that caused the Pope to answer allegations about the Vatican’s failure to speak out against the Nazi treatment of the the Jews. We helped Jews ‘discreetly’ is what he said.

The Vatican is not alone in getting religion a bad name. All those US christian fundamentalists, who supported George W Bush, are still around. And on the other side the Taliban are still urging all Muslims to undo women’s emancipation. And the Dubai muslims are sending tourists to jail for kissing in public.

Yet millions of people around the globe persist in believing in a God. And thousands of others, like me, believe that God was one of the best inventions of evolving human beings. The God who urges people to have faith. The God who urges us to listen to the voices within. And listen intelligently.

Like Philip Pullman, who has just written a novel, suggesting that Christ was one of twin brothers. Christ the saint and Christ the scoundrel.

Maybe in his next novel he will go one step further and suggest the even more amazing possiblity, that all human beings are a mixture of saintly genes and scoudrel genes.

We have the choice as to who rules the roost. And some of us spend hours in agonising internal debates.

Enough of all this. Despite all our scientific advances the holiday weather course in these parts was wrong. The sun came out, showing Golden Cap at its best. And in the garden the daffodils flowered.

Now that’s something to wonder at.

The election is still not called. The manifestoes are still not pubished. But it is already clear that none of the major parties are going to address the root causes of the crisis we face, which is far worse than the 1930s depression and far, far worse than anything Britain faced in those fabled days of the 1970s when the Great Britain  was being brought to its knees by union wreckers.

All of them will no doubt target the bankers, and have proposals to regulate them. They should be called to accunt. But they are the symptom not the cause.

The crisis we are in was caused, not by the behaviour of a few greedy individuals, but because of the fact that most of the large companies of the world, which have a much greater effect on the lives of ordinary human beings, than their governments, are controlled by companies, whose legal responsibility is to their shareholders.

They are the creatures of nineteenth century capitalism, which brought the world many benefits, including gas and electricity. And, I  for one, am quite happy for entrepreneurs, who have built up something new, to remain in charge of the companies they created.

But most of the large companies of the world, are managed by ‘managers’ who pay themselves huge salaries at absolutely no risk to themseleves. They are not entrepreneurs. Even if they fail their contracts ensure a very, very comfortable retirement.

They are far worse than civil servants, who, at least are nurtured in notions such as public service. Yet, we not only call them in to manage companies, we put them in charge of the NHS.  When, of course, they fire the nurses and hire more managers of their own ilk.

The world of 2010 has different imperatives, as a vistor from Mars would immediately see.

In day to day terms these managers are not accountable to anyone. They can sell off everything they own, and evade any responsiblity for the employees, who have helped to make their company what it is.

They are paid hack, albeit very well paid hacks.

The ethos in which these managers have been brought up, is that this is OK. So we have had in the last few days the instance of Carolyn McCall, the chief executive of The Guardian, which is our only serious mildly left of centre newspaper. She has left for a bigger pay packet with EasyJet. As if it does not matter what she does. From the Guardian, which provides an education for  those members of the working class who happen to read it. To EasyJet, which offers the working classes holidays on the sunny beaches of Spain, and British beer and fish and chips if they want it.

If Marx were still alive he might well have written that cheap Spanish holidays were the opiate of the working class.

Joking apart. Is it healthy that the huge companies which affect our daily lives are governed by directors, and their hugely paid managerial hacks, are enjoined to consider the interests of the shareholders. Not a word about the workers who make the products. Not a word about the effect on the environment in which  they work, and which they affect.

Adam Smith. What would you be saying if you were alive today.

Probably not what David Cameron would like to quote.

Cars have been killing people, ever since they were invented. Mostly pedestrians who  got in their path. But in the last few weeks the world”s biggest car manufacturer has been forced to admit that it has recently been producing cars that kill their drivers. Including tthe famed Prius, which is so ecological, running on battery in town, that the Clintons have one each. Like most modern cars, what happens is largely a result of the electronics, which are mostly outside the drriver’s control. If you own one, or indeed if you own any modern car, you have to trust in these electronics.

As I have done, since I bought my Prius in April 2003. It is now as dearly beloved as the MGB I bought in 1967 and the Honda Civic I bought in 1995. All splendid pieces of engineering. But some of  the recent Priuses have been going rogue. The accelerator has been accelerating although the driver’s foot was not on the pedal. So  Prius drrivers have been caused by these amazing electronics to crash into the car in front.

Which in a few cases has resulted in the dirver’s death.

You don’t need to worry if you are an old Prius owner (I hope!). Because thhis is a recent development. It may result, although this is far from proven, from Toyota’s response to the economic crisis, which has forced all companies to pare costs to preserve the  shareholders’  profit.

Toyota is one those many Japanese companies, which arose after the Second World War, sought to marry the capitlistic mores of the American conquerors, with local imperatives. It looked after its work force as well as the balance sheet. And it responded to none-commercial needs, including the ecological and those of safety, which had been highlighted by the critics of Detroit.

Toyota produced cars which are less likely to kill other people. And like the -Prius, are less likely to produce global warming.

Until the last year or so, when they have made some cars which kill their own drivers.

The election is not yet called, and the manifestoes are not yet published. But already it is clear  that no party is grappling with the causes of the truly horrible condition of the UK economy. Which according to the economists is far far worse than what Britain faced in the 1970s and even worse than the 1930s years of depression.

But the consensus is that the villains of  this  particular crisis are the bankers, so that in Britain, as in Obama’s US, the antit-dote is measures to bring the bankers into line.

Which is necessary. But it is dealing one of the symptoms, not the cause of the present crisis.

The banks are not the arch-conspirtors, who run the world. They are people who shift money around, and make sure they are well paid for their efforts. They get their fees mostly from the giant companies, whose budgets are bigger than that of many small countries.

These companies have an enourmous impact on our personal lives. So even, if we live in vibrant democracities, as in Britain and the US, have a profound impact on our well-being.

The presest crisis has arisen because their activities, as well as  those of the bankers, have been insufficiently regulated. Thanks to unthinking worship of the free market, imprinted on Britain by Margaret Thatcher, and re-inforced by Tony Blair, imprinted on the US by Ronald Reagan, and urged on by George W Bush.

The problem is to do with un-regulated capitalism.

And none of te parities is yet addressing this problem.