I’ve just watched David Cameron deliver another accomplished speech at the Conservatives’ Spring Conference at Cheltenham.

Gradually — a word also used by George Osborne this morning — he’s beginning to give shape to the message that will take him into the General Election.

“Thrift” loomed large, while “tax and spend” becomes the natural enemy. Sensibly, he didn’t put too much skin on the flesh and bones. Things could take many turns for the worse before election day arrives, however soon it comes.

The speech was a good mix and plays well with the mood of the times, especially after last week’s atrocious Labour Budget. It sounded pitch perfect to me, as far as it went.

I would have liked to hear something about an association agreement with the European Union, but recognize the constraints he’s under. Maybe a little dog whistle in code to us genuine Conservatives would do the trick?

Here’s my suggestion. In his next speech or TV interview Cameron could mention former French President Giscard d’Estaing by name, in any context, and we will get the message.

I’ll be listening out intently.

The following is my contribution to the debate on the standards adopted by our Members of Parliament.

As an author I sometimes despair of publishers. And yet, as a former book publisher, I know the problems publishers face. So I’m posting this little cri de coeur I found on the web.

It’s written by a publisher, obviously, who shall remain anonymous, largely because I’ve lost the reference. But it does provide some insight into the always tortuous relationship between author and publisher:

Authors really don’t like publishers. They don’t like us because we change their work, or force them to. We reject their titles. We dress their books in jackets they hate.

We take custody of their manuscripts and refuse visitation rights. We don’t let them see or comment on marketing plans. We spend very little money or time promoting their books.

Our royalty statements might as well be in Aramaic. We don’t return their voicemail or email. We don’t communicate and we don’t care.

Sure, that’s an over-generalization, but it’s too close to the truth for comfort. It should concern us that so many authors feel this way about their publishers. And it’s our fault, really, for not communicating better about exactly what we do, and why.

Why can’t our MPs demonstrate such exquisite self-knowledge?

Continuing with the ever present thorn in the public foot of MP’s expenses, something glaringly obvious (to me, at least) has been missed by many.

MPs on the left of politics spend a lot of energy denouncing “fat cats” in industry and commerce, as well as the City of London, for their huge paypackets. Consequently, they have induced a phobia about putting up their own salaries to appropriate levels.

A kind of Freemasons’ nod and winkery has been covertly put in place across party lines to use the expenses system to compensate them for what they regard as inadequate remuneration.

Such a system encourages corruption because it is fundamentally corrupt to conceal and disguise payments received — of any sort.

Thus most MPs cross the line between fair reward and brown envelope practices. The system itself is corrupt, therefore those who take part are corrupted.

As Iain Martin writes in today’s Sunday Telegraph, the answer lies in Members’ own hands — they are meant to be sovereign, after all.

How can they hold the Executive to account, when Chief Whips know everything about the jiggerypokery going on all around them? Francis Urquhart would have had a field day. “I know about that bathplug, Jacqui.”

Pay them £100k and be done with it. After all, if a 5-a-day officer at Warminster-on-Sea Parish Council gets that, why not our legislators?

Oh, I forgot. They aren’t our legislators any more, are they? Brussels has taken that prize.

Okay, promise them £150k if they pull us out of the EU. That should get things moving, don’t you think?

Down here in the South West of England we have three football teams: Exeter (the Grecians), Torquay (the Gulls), and Plymouth (the Pilgrims).

Mostly they languish towards the bottom of the Football League, which I believe has four divisions.

Usually one of them manages bottom spot in the fourth division, before disappearing, through relegation, into a bottomless pit of poverty and amateurism.

However, our local supporters are rarely downcast, taking it all in their stride as an Act of God. One cheery soul told me how he deals with the constant stench of defeat.

“Easy,” he said. “When you get your football paper at the weekend, turn it upside down before looking at the tables. My team is usually top of the whole football league.”

Is that a glimpse of Gordon Brown’s political philosophy?

Remember the “world car”?

It could be a Ford, a Range Rover, or a Chrysler, but its parts were made all over the world, from Brazil to China, before being assembled into its final incarnation, when someone would stick a badge on it proclaiming its proud provenance.

This was globalization in the raw. A ruthless, yet profitable, use of comparative advantage to drive the costs of motoring down — however carboniferous the footprint as all those parts criss-crossed the globe on smelly bits of shipping.

Then the socialist left — devoid of purpose after the collapse of the Soviet Union and China’s flight to capitalism — spotted a gap in the market. The old International Socialist movement, now describing itself as “Progressive Internationalism”, subverted the word “globalization” to describe its own activities.

Many normally astute commentators fell for this subterfuge and eagerly jumped on the global bandwagon, little knowing that it is, in reality, their worst nightmare.

Syntagma has been one of the few voices to proclaim this dirty trick from the rooftops.

Listen very carefully, I will say this only once: Globalization has ceased to be a technical term of economics and is now a pernicious political doctrine of the old left hiding under a thin veil of modernity.

Anyone using the word “global” more that once a year should be sacked immediately from high office.

Finally, on the new 50p tax rate for anyone earning more than £150k a year:

Both David Cameron and George Osborne said today they will put it on a list of taxes to repeal, but priority will be given to National Insurance increases for people earning just £20k and more.

Fair enough, but given the rate of attrition 50p will cause (see Nigel Lawson’s piece in today’s Sunday Telegraph), perhaps they could turn the list upside-down when deciding which tax to drop first.

Some of the best people do this, I’m told.

PS: I shall be listening out for a Cameroon mention of the secret codeword: Giscard d’Estaing, over the coming week. PMQs would do very nicely.

John Evans

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As it’s a holiday weekend and we’re all supposed to be tackling the puzzle supplements that newspapers inexplicably distribute at this time, I thought Syntagma should have its own version.

Well, one puzzle, at least:

In the world of apples and oranges, two plus two equals four.

In the world of water droplets, two plus two equals one.

Does that destroy the cosy world of mathematical certainty? Answers in a linked blogpost or by hitting the contact button in the sidebar.

Dirty tricks are all over the British newspapers this Sunday morning. A senior government aide has fallen on his machete, and the Labour blogosphere, such as it is, has gone into meltdown. More heads are predicted to roll.

I’m not going to comment on the specific incidents or personalities involved because I’m too far off the action to contribute anything of interest. Iain Dale’s blog is the place to get the lowdown and links to other players.

On a side note, this site has twice been the victim of dirty tricks. Two years ago I wrote a review of a new IT product launching in Britain. I criticized the cost of the deal and held the view that it would be a flop over here. I was wrong, but that’s irrelevant. Almost immediately our servers were subjected to a three-day distributed attack, presumably from zombie computers, that closed down our sites for 72 hours.

That was a commercial intervention. I’ve reason to believe that an ongoing kicking is political.

I’m not going to spell this out because that might prejudice the operation of the site, but someone very web-savvy has caused considerable inconvenience to the operation of Syntagma.

Taking into account the new revelations of the extent Downing Street will go to attack its perceived enemies, plus the anti-Labour nature of much of what I write here these days, it doesn’t take much to invite strong suspicions.

Putting two and two together, and making either four or one, it seems just possible that someone who knows about these things is throwing a few silent blows in our direction.

I can’t prove it, of course, but I’m about to approach a third party to investigate.

Politicians are supposed to take reasonably-argued criticisms in their stride. After all, politics can be a brutal game. It seems that this is not the case. Someone somewhere has a thin skin masquerading as a thick one.

The historian Dr David Starkey, has accused lady colleagues of writing only about women in history.

A few of them have replied with the charge that he writes only about men.

Girls, girls!

It’s true that Antonia Fraser and others have penned many pages in the cause of Elizabeth I. Boudicca (Boadicea) attracts a great deal of interest from women historians.

Starkey, who has just begun a Channel 4 series on Henry VIII, is sticking to his guns.

Isn’t it reassuring that some of our most distinguished historians, who interpret the past for us, are capable of having such a deep and edifying discussion?

Rod Liddle, an old Today Programme hand, has informed us that he gave up chives for Lent. A noble choice, and a great sacrifice, given how easy it is to become hooked on chives.

Many years ago, I made a more subtle decision. I gave up giving up for Lent.

In an ad hoc straw poll, someone asked around how many people now give up anything for Lent. The result was vanishingly small, and not much better among Catholics and High Church supporters.

Most, apparently, genuflect towards the practice by giving up something they never consume anyway — Liddle, you have a lot to answer for. Others just lie about it, or ignore it altogether.

Like Advent calendars at Christmas, we just can’t be bothered with all this paraphenalia nowadays.

Apart from farmers, does anyone mark the Quarter Days, for example. Michaelmas is not often mentioned in my presence, even on the day itself. However, it remains part of our poetic heritage, occurring mainly in novels by Thomas Hardy, George Eliot and others of their vintage.

With many Anglicans only using churches for “hatch, match and dispatch” purposes, (births, marriages and deaths), Church leaders really are fighting Canute-like against a tide of indifference.

As today is Easter Sunday, probably the most significant day in the Christian calendar, it does indicate a bleak future for the old religion.

Even America, Christianity’s most humble servant for 200 years, is going in the same direction.

If it is disappearing, do we need to find a substitute fast, or will it be replaced by something infinitely worse and more terrifying?

“When people stop believing in God, they don’t believe in nothing — they believe in anything.”
G.K. Chesterton

An opportunity, or a fall from grace? Times change, but human nature retains its propensity for disaster, and genuine mystics will always be thin on the ground.

The latest answer to the perceived problem of climate change is a process called Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS).

A current advert by the Shell oil company informs us that “capturing” carbon dioxide gas (CO2) from industrial processes, and “storing” it underground, is the safest way of reducing our “carbon footprint” on the Earth. While the company admits this will not be easy, it nevertheless promotes the practice for the future.

Now, I’m trying to visualize this process in the real world. By common consent we emit vast quantities of CO2 from almost everything we do. I haven’t got a number for it, but it must be millions of tons of every day.

If all of that is somehow blown into underground caverns, do they suppose there won’t be leaks? And not just leaks but whole plumes of the stuff spraying out into the air in some places.

Adverse conditions underground, like earthquakes, could make this a nightmare scenario. Imagine not only having to cope with the effects of a quake, but with vast amounts of carbon dioxide gas in the local atmosphere too.

CO2 is not deadly toxic in the way carbon monoxide is, but enough of it has poisonous effects and might reduce the oxygen in the air sufficiently to suffocate many people. It might also be changed by atmospheric conditions — sun, cosmic rays, etcetera — into deadly monoxide and kill everyone in sight.

Here’s what expert website Analox.net calculates:

After a few decades of this process, the amount of the gas stored underground will be vast. Given scientists’ knack of getting things wrong, how can we possibly allow this to happen?

We may be in more danger from the climate scientists than the climate itself.

TV veteran Michael Parkinson, had this to say about Jade Goody’s death: “When we clear the media smoke screen from around her death, what we’re left with is a woman who came to represent all that’s paltry and wretched about Britain today.”

Jade Goody’s grandmother replied: “If I could see him face-to-face I would love to give him a right mouthful and a wallop.”

It proves Parkie’s case, doesn’t it?

John Evans

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We are going through a period of profound transition — from one party in power to another, and from boom to long-term bust. The signs are all around us.

When I first moved to Devon, pedestrian signposts had the patina of age and gave distances in yards and fractions of a mile.

Then Labour came in and the posts were changed to metric ones. These were very unpopular and many were defaced or painted over — we have a UKIP MEP down here, Trevor Coleman. I’ll bet you’ve never heard of him.

Today, I noticed that all the signposts have been changed yet again. Miserably, the yardage is still absent, but at least the Napoleonic metres have gone.

In the Exeter area we now measure distances between sites of interest and public conveniences in minutes.

Yes, some Council plodder has been trudging around the City and environs with stopwatch and pencil recording how long it takes to walk from point to point. The job was probably advertised in The Guardian at £100k a year.

I’ll leave you to imagine what comes next. Brussels will surely not take this lying down.

I’ve been waiting for years for a new EU system for measuring time. Euroheures, perhaps.

I watched Lord (Adair) Turner on the Andrew Marr show this morning with incredulity.

He’s a clever chap, no doubt, and he’s had more Government jobs than you can shake a pile of sticks at. In his new dual role as Financial Services chief and compiler of future rules on bank surveillance, he demands to be heard.

So I was both amused and bemused by his implacable and persistent defence of the status quo in banking regulation.

A new Glass-Steagull Act? No, there are occasions when crossovers between retail and investment banking are inevitable. And Lehmans was not a deposit-taker, yet still crashed the system.

Strict limits on capital adequacy? We should be careful because smaller banks will not be big enough to support the economy.

Tighter regulation all round? We’re not facing a repeat of present circumstances for decades, so let’s lob that into the long grass for the foreseeable future.

He is, though, recommending a huge expansion of the FSA and its responsibilities. Presumably that means ratcheting up its present cost of £350m annually closer to a round billion.

Even when reducing its caseload, the public sector seeks to expand its budget.

A blast from the past is never far away in our 24-hour media.

Last week the name of Ayn Rand appeared again in the public prints under the distinguished byline of Gladstonite flag-bearer, Simon Heffer. Ye Gods, I had completely blanked this lady out from memory.

I first read her most famous tome Atlas Shrugged in the late 1980s when Thatcherism was the meaning of life, the universe, and everything, in the City of London where I then worked.

I have to confess, I was underimpressed by the book. Apart from being an immensely long novel about the endeavours of capitalist heroes and their socialist enemies in Depression era America, it was stupifyingly boring.

It also seemed to me to be almost identical in reverse to the Stalinist artworks about the endeavours of socialist heroes in the Soviet Union, where the Depression never ended.

The book is full of cardboard characters, with people representing notions rather than anyone you might know. A lesser version of a Shaw play without the wit and humour.

Interestingly, Rand grew up under Stalin before escaping to America, so understood what Communism was like at first hand. Even allowing for that, her advocacy of capitalism red in tooth and claw, operating like a vast machine, visible across every landscape, was too similar to Stalin’s murderous industrialization policies for my taste. Both philosophies shared the same inhuman and ultimately self-defeating qualities.

As we could be entering Great Depression 2.0, it should have some resonance today. I’m sure the basic idea is sound. Free individuals, subject to creative destruction, allocate scarce resources better than booby bureaucrats, as we know all too well.

But there’s something missing. It’s called Up-To-A-Pointism, and in present circumstances we would do well to remember it.

Rand’s Objectivism would lead us all the way back to where we now find ourselves.

Much fuss over the new, proposed 45 percent tax rate for £150k+ earners. As some commentators have said, it could be another of Gordon Brown’s less than subtle traps of the “damned if you do and damned if you don’t” variety, opening the way to the charge of “Tory cuts!”.

In defensive response, Shadow Chancellor George Osborne signalled that he may not be able to avoid retaining it once in power, given the state of the economy. It may have been more profitable to avoid the subject.

It has to be said, George Osborne attracts a great deal of antipathy from individuals on his own side. There are those of a Tory persuasion who would flay him alive if they thought they could get away with it.

So far, the leadership has adopted the sensible strategy not to give too much away before the election, which could be as late as June next year. History relates that Margaret Thatcher did much the same in 1979.

But how should David Cameron address Brown’s inevitable taunt of “Tory cuts”?

With real anger. He should turn it back on Brown, branding them “Brown’s Cuts”. As Chancellor, he ran the prosperity-creating parts of the economy ruthlessly into the ground to fund his bloated public domain.

Cameron should repeat the phrase at every possible opportunity to dull the edge of Brown’s claymore in the campaign proper. A taste of his own poison will throw Brown into confusion and drill the message into voters’ heads.

As Corporal Jones used to say, “They don’t like it up ‘em”.

Mr “Green”, Jonathon Porritt, adviser to Prince Charles and Gordon Brown, wants Britain’s population reduced to 30 million. At present it stands at 61m and is expected to rise to 71m in 20 years.

What exactly are we supposed to do with the excess 40m people? Should we drop them into shark-infested waters? Ship them through the channel tunnel and dump them in France? Maybe have regular culls like the Canadians do with baby seals?

How do we know we ourselves won’t be included in the list?

One thing’s for sure, no one will mention that the recent immigrant population is having children at a much faster rate than the natives.

Where was Porritt when Labour’s open-door stealth immigration policy was foisted on a reluctant Britain?

H.G. Wells thought that the optimum world population was two billion. What would he make of the 7bn sardines now living on the planet?

One can’t help thinking that Jonathon Porritt would be regarded as one of humanity’s worst ogres if ever he gets round to formulating a policy to carry out his new, big idea.

Prince Charles should gently guide his old friend to the nearest rest home for oddballs and nutters.

John Evans

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Here at Syntagma Towers we groaned at the news that Edward Kennedy is to get an honorary Knighthood at the request of Gordon Brown, a long term friend of the Massachusetts Senator.

The fate of Mary Jo Kopechne, left to drown at Chappaquiddick Island by the younger brother of JFK, destroyed Ted Kennedy’s presidential hopes for ever.

The incident was made worse by Kennedy’s failure to alert police and rescue services for 24 hours or more. Did Brown not remember this shameful incident while planning to devalue British chivalric orders?

I suppose if you’re prepared to debauch the nation’s currency, and find room for Stalinist Eric Hobsbawm in the Companionship of Honour, you’re beyond doing the right thing.

Of Knighthoods, Shakespeare got it right:

When first this order was ordain’d, my Lords,
Knights … were of noble birth,
Valiant and virtuous, full of haughty courage …
He then that is not furnish’d in this sort
Doth but usurp the sacred name of Knight,
Profaning this most honourable order.

Quite.

It’s official. Labour will lose the next election.

At least that was the strong impression given by Peter Mandelson on the Andrew Marr programme this morning.

Discussing the problems of the Royal Mail and his unpopular efforts to privatize 30 percent of it, Mandelson said that Labour had tried to do this a number of times before, without success.

Then the crucial admission: “This is the last throw of the dice for this government.”

Slip of the tongue? Freudian whatsit? Silky way of subtly distancing himself from the coming defeat by predicting it, while sticking it on Gordon Brown?

Or do we overrate the Machiavellian powers of this man for whom “the last throw of the dice” might be equally appropriate?

After criticizing the government’s handling of the financial crisis many times on this site, I’ve received a few indignant communications asking “What would you do then?”

Here’s what I wrote on January 23:

“Of the £650bn [public sector] pot, an emergency £150bn cut would be relatively easy, if painful for some. Overpaid operatives in the sector could be offered the choice between a 25 percent pay cut or redundancy. This would rebuild the public finances and make room for tax cuts. Brown built his empire, let him now dismantle it for this country’s sake.”

Paul Johnson wrote this week of the 20 percent pay cuts across public services during the 1930s depression (Spectator).

Now hundreds of thousands of workers in the private sector have quietly agreed to pay cuts already. Many more have been laid off altogether or put onto shorter working weeks. Why then should the public sector be immune this time round?

The answer is twofold: Brown is afraid of public sector strikes, and is averse to clipping his “client state” for electoral purposes.

Politics is the art of the possible, but I believe that most people in the public sector should realize they can’t be set above the rest forever.

David Cameron and George Osborne will face a wall of ideology, propped up by buttresses of self-interest, when they come to power. It’s vital, though, they don’t shirk the dismantling of Brown’s folly.

We now know that Gordon Brown has sunk an extra £219 billion a year in real terms into his personal vanity project, the equivalent of the massive pyramids built by dodgy Pharaohs in ancient Egypt.

Lopping £150 billion off that is not beyond the wit of determined Conservatives.

On Thursday, Prince Charles is to claim we have 100 months to save the planet from “irreversible climate change”. A strange assertion in the circumstances.

Man’s contribution to natural global warming is unknown and, in my view, probably greatly overstated by the anti-capitalist activists who push the argument to ridiculous levels.

However, consider what they might say if the present economic crash had not happened, and countries around the world had voluntarily reduced their greenhouse gases by the same amount as the drop caused by the current world depression.

Wouldn’t they be ecstatic with delight and self-praise? Imagine the articles in The Guardian claiming the moral high ground. I don’t think the phrase: “100 months to save the world” would be uttered by anyone. Why spoil a great story.

Furthermore, has any of the followers of James Lovelock considered that a prolonged world depression might be the handiwork of Gaia — the supposed self-regulatory mechanism of the planet itself?

If Gaia exists, it’s precisely what you would expect, is it not?

According to the theory, Mankind is an irrelevance in all this.

A few months ago I succumbed to the Twitter craze, mainly to find out about “microblogging” — messages limited to 140 characters, or less.

For illustration, the paragraph above is 138 characters.

I don’t use the account very much (twitter.com/Syntagma), and I haven’t delved into it beyond spraying out a few tart comments from time to time.

However, there’s a vast hinterland behind Twitter, comprising hundreds of applications that allow you to aggregate, sort, search and personalize the modest, low wordage utterances of the Twitocracy. Some Twitizens even believe it’s the way news will be distributed in future.

How does Twitter make money? It doesn’t. Google has denied it will buy it, which must put the kibosh on the service pretty soon.

Who else will snap it up in the current climate? Rupert Murdoch, the Barclay Brothers? Few takers, I think.

It’s more than likely that a new class system will emerge, with toffs who read newspapers, and twits who tweet like birds.

The fate of an earlier Canadian Conservative Government is casting the gloomiest of shades over Labour MPs. In 1993 it was reduced from power to two seats in the Canadian House of Commons.

The Canadian meltdown has no equivalent in British politics, although the Tories have been in the doldrums for 12 years and sometimes it must have felt like that.

Now it’s Labour’s turn to ruminate their fate and sink into political bipolar disorder. Could it happen here?

The Canadian House of Commons has 308 members, the British House, 646. Two seats in Ottawa would translate into 4.19 at Westminster.

Is it possible that Labour could fall into single figures at the next election? Unlikely, but a double-figure result should not be ruled out.

With Gordon in charge, the campaign will be clunky. Whatever advantage a sitting government gets from being in power will be cancelled out by his dire performance.

His closest colleagues will be more interested in positioning themselves to take over the leadership than saving his neck. The mood of the public will be explosive and there could be rioting on the streets.

David Cameron, on the other hand, will undoubtedly run a smooth and impressive campaign, with all his senior people onboard for a return to power.

The LibDems and other parties will be severely squeezed. UKIP Tories will want to be on the winning side, while the BNP will take votes from Labour.

It’s hard to see how a Conservative landslide can be avoided. But a Canadian-style meltdown is not the British way.

If it were, who, we might ask, would be Labour’s 0.19? There are plenty of candidates for that role.

John Evans

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What is Emily Maitlis on?

Emily Maitlis and Nick Owen on the BBC News Channel

The Newsnight presenter is usually somber and on the ball during her late night appearances in Jeremy Paxman’s chair. But catch her after lunch on the BBC’s News Channel and she giggles like a schoolgirl, often for no apparent reason.

I’m not complaining, it’s good to have a bit of life injected into this often funereal blanket of news.

But what is she on? Either the BBC canteen serves a good wine at lunch, or … she’s very ticklish.

Lots of chatter about “one-term Tories” last week. This golden Labour scenario sounds like it was invented by someone with a vested interest in the Labour leadership and hopes to avoid a generational shift.

Jack Straw or Peter Mandelson, perhaps?

It presupposes that David Cameron gets bogged down in the first years of his premiership and becomes so unpopular that the country turns back to Labour with relief in the subsequent election. Margaret Thatcher’s first period in office is cited. It was fraught with recessionary woes and nearly collapsed but for the Falklands War.

The difference now is that the country gives ownership of the nation’s economic plight to Gordon Brown and Labour. They also know that Brown’s frantic attempts to fix it have failed, with more failure to come.

However bad it gets in the next Parliament, Labour’s wishful thinking will not be granted. Disaster on this scale requires a generation to forget.

With careful stewardship, the Conservatives can count on three periods in office at least. They should develop a To-Do list that will last them for three Parliaments. It will take that long.

The first of March is the beginning of my Spring Offensive. This is when I throw off the torpors of winter through a programme of rigorous diet and excercise.

Last year the American tech blogosphere was heavy with “fatblogging” — a form of ritual torture which not only hammers the body but also gets the sufferer to write about it in detail for the consumption of fellow addicts and bemused onlookers.

Naturally, I’ll not be going down that road in 2009.

Like many another, I put on a few pounds during the months of dark nights and midwinter festivities. This year I have one stone to lose by the end of March. It may not seem much, but that’s quite a lot of weight.

One stone — or 14 pounds — is the equivalent of five copies of The Sunday Times. Next time you’re in a newsagent’s on a Sunday pick them up and feel how much added padding that represents. You’ll be shocked.

So I hope to shed one Sunday Times and a magazine section each week through March. No doubt some weeks I’ll only manage a Mail on Sunday, and may even be heard cursing, “Damn, I’ve put on a News of the World in seven days!”

So exercise has to be part of the plan too. My aim is to similate the fitness of a Mountain Man, who is said to walk up mountains (hills, really) at the same rate as he walks down — no mean feat, and tough on the quadriceps.

As it takes six weeks to reach the maximum fitness you can attain without professional training, I usually start this part of the programme in mid-February.

The diet begins tomorrow the 2nd of March, on the principle that it shows an excessively eager nature to start too soon.

The State education system in Britain just gets worse and worse. Hyperactive jobsworths are forever coming up with new wheezes that dazzle in the headlines for an hour but have no merit in practice.

The entire structure is probably beyond repair after 12 years of scorched earth policies for everything that promotes a well-stocked mind and an understanding of the principles that stand behind ideas and formulations.

The Conservatives have yet to jettison some of Labour’s most pernicious obsessions, like the refusal to allow selection in academic subjects. I have high hopes they will do so in office.

But what should the basic education system provide?

It should give students the ability to position themselves in time and space, with historical narrative as the time axis, and geography as the space axis. Both subjects have been severely downgraded in primary and secondary schooling.

The curriculum should also be shorn of soft “social” subjects better learnt at home or through experience. All attempts at social engineering should be strictly outlawed.

Psychobabble has become a wordy substitute for a true understanding of human nature, which is not a machine. Allied to that, PC (political so-called correctness) has assumed fascist proportions in attempts to control the thoughts of the population. Schools lead the way as mind-cleansing centres of anything with which the government disagrees.

Why do they do that? Because “they” — and we know who they are — want us all to be just like them.

Sorry, we don’t.

A lost generation of schoolchildren from the Labour years will probably never be redeemed and will haunt the future as they carry the mouldy seed of mediocrity forward.

The Conservatives can make a start on creating a new wave of educated young people with a better grasp of the fundamentals and of more use to the 21st-century world.

If you’re looking for a good read on the wild and woolly side, there’s no better publication to start with than The Hedge Fund Journal — there had to be one, didn’t there?

I’m always fascinated at how every niche market has its journal and coterie of followers, often existing in another dimension from the rest of us.

So the Asset Management class, which has produced its own stars, like Hugh Hendry of Eclectica — the Mick Jagger of short (and long) selling — has a journal to keep its members in touch.

To most people hedge funds are so exotic they belong on another planet. They are run by a tribe of self-confessed pirates, some with a single ship, others with an entire fleet.

Hugh Hendry has become a media star, sought after by the likes of Jeff Randall on Sky, and Evan Davis on the BBC. His good humour and Blarney-stoned eloquence, with an irresistible touch of the unexpected, puts him in the top bracket of media performers from the much-depleted ranks of the hedgies.

Will they survive the depression? Just as the world needs hyenas and vultures to clear up carrion, and bacteria to consume dead and dying bodies, I suspect they will.

You have to see it in the round.

Is the eurozone about to break up? Don’t rule it out.

There’s a lot of conflicting talk around at the moment. The Germans are adamantly opposed to taking on liability for the debts of the less disciplined members — the PIIGS: Portugal, Italy, Ireland, Greece and Spain; Emerald Club Med, one might say.

Yet the German Finance Minister has not ruled out a rescue in the last resort. German voters might not take kindly to it though, and there are elections in September.

Now the European Investment Bank (EIB) is being touted as the issuer of new Euro bonds to shore up these profligate countries. The unbending Maastricht Treaty rules this area, of course, but a little matter of law never stopped the Commission bending the rules in the past. The European Stability Pact was a classic example.

Whatever happens next will prove that the present one-size-fits-all system can never survive without either much more beef behind it, or a smaller membership.

At the end of this depression, I expect the eurozone will look very different and carry much less weight in the world.

Quote of the Week

“England, together with the rest of the world, is changing. And like everything else it can change only in certain directions, which up to a point can be foreseen.” George Orwell

John Evans

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Tax evasion is in the news again and, yes, little Liechtenstein is in the thick of it.

Glen Moreno, who is said to have advised some of our top banks on “tax evasion” and was appointed to head up the committee overseeing the partly-nationalized British banks, has been named and shamed and lost his job. Another Brownite bites the bones in the graveyard.

I’m always wary though when someone is accused of tax evasion. More often than not it’s tax avoidance we’re looking at. I’ve no idea if this is the case with Moreno, not having followed the Liechtenstein side of the story in any detail. In the present climate, though, even advising on tax avoidance is enough to condemn you to a trip through Traitors’ Gate.

However, it’s a truism that there is no obligation on anyone so to organize their affairs that they maximize their liability to the Revenue.

Let’s be clear, so-called loopholes in tax laws are not the fault of taxpayers. While on the statute book, they ARE the law. Minimizing one’s liability to the Revenue by using the wormholes created by increasingly complex tax law, is perfectly legitimate.

To some, doing so suggests bad faith or not not acting in the “spirit” of the law. That argument falls flat when a Chancellor creates a raft of stealth taxes to confuse people into paying yet more to the Treasury, as Gordon Brown did for a decade.

Since the whole question of tax avoidance only exists because of bad legislation, let’s rename it: tax optimization.

On a similar note, let’s look into the murky world of derivatives, futures markets and securitization.

Many people now have it in for these supposed jokers in the pack, and they are right to do so … most of the time.

But take the case of a power company that’s obligated to supply electricity and gas bought on the wholesale markets to the wider population. In an era of political turmoil and interference in these markets, it’s right that the companies should try to even out price fluctuations through the year for the benefit of their customers.

They do this by taking up futures positions to buy supplies at a fixed price when the position matures. The problem arises when any Tom, Dick and Harriet can also buy into this market, betting that the price will rise so they can offload their positions at a profit.

It’s obvious that if the T, D and H part of the market grows large relative to the rest, much more oil and gas is on order at any one time than the total world supply. This pushes up prices and destabilizes not only the energy markets, but also whole economies.

That’s what happened last year when the oil price reached $150 a barrel and looked like rising higher. And this occurred when oil consumption was falling off the proverbial cliff owing to the gathering slump.

Wouldn’t it be fairly simple to limit the use of specific futures markets to those businesses that actually use the commodities traded in?

I expect many learned folk will explain why that’s not possible. Simplicity, it seems, is beyond those with brains the size of the planet.

In Saturday’s Daily Mail commentator Peter Oborne surmised that putting back the Budget to April 22, following the G20 powwow in London, may suggest a June 2009 General Election.

The presiding “genius” behind this train of thought is Peter Mandelson, who apparently thinks that June may be the best option available, especially if a giveaway April budget bribed enough voters to contain their natural rage against the government.

Some credence is also being placed on Brown cutting a magnificent figure at the G20 — a forlorn hope.

If I were Brown I would take that advice. Not just because it may be the optimized moment, the least worst gamble to take, but because the national mood is now so poisonous there could well be riots in the street by the autumn. Brown is on course to become the Guy Fawkes of the 21st century.

There are huge decisions ahead that could go either way. Brown may be presiding already over the worst calamity for Britain since the Black Death in the 14th century.

Without a mandate, he is simply not legitimized to take those decisions on behalf of 58m citizens already impoverished by his profligacy.

Come to think of it, if I were Brown I would apply for the Chiltern Hundreds (resign Parliament) and live in exile for the rest of my days.

I have to confess I’ve developed a taste for Jeff Randall Live — 7.30pm, Mondays to Thursdays, Sky News.

So far, the former Business Editor of the BBC — probably now better known as Robert Peston’s predecessor — has interviewed David Cameron, a raft of bank Chairmen and Chief Execs, plus various movers and destroyers of British business. It’s a must-see for anyone interested in our gloomy age of austerity.

With Stephanie Flanders off the radar again at the BBC, it’s good to have a change of tune from Peston and Rory Bremner’s note perfect impression of him.

Down to earth Randall is the best antidote to sing-song Roberto at the Beeb.

For those optimistic souls searching early for the green shoots of recovery in the scorched, brown earth of Great Depression 2.0, there are two things to remember:

1. Unemployment reaches its crescendo AFTER the recovery has begun.
2. Share prices begin a sustained rise BEFORE the recovery begins.

In fact, equity gains are one of the green shoots to look out for.

As I gaze out at my garden, there are green shoots all over the place. Perhaps they were what Shriti the Shriek was referring to. Somehow, I don’t think Fred the Shred would agree.

What colourful characters this depression is throwing up. Jeffrey Archer could not make them up.

Strange that Vince Cable should win not one, but two prizes in the Channel 4 Political Awards, broadcast on Saturday evening.

It was also weird that at a time when the Labour party’s fortunes are at their nadir, so many Labour people, including clown-in-chief John Prescott, were nominated in the lists.

I got the impression that poor old capitalism is so out of favour with our leftish Establishment, that they can hardly bring themselves to acknowledge the now rampant Conservatives. The usual Stateist causes predominated, making the show the most one-sided, out of kilter political programme I’ve witnessed in a long while.

Surely it’s time to get rid of Jon Snow? This snowdrop has long since wilted. Anna Ford or Selina Scott would be worthy replacements for this ageing Bennite.

Quotes of the Week
“Everyone wants to save the world; no-one wants to help Mom do the dishes.” P.J. O’Rourke

“Those who preach the politics of the Brotherhood of Man are most likely to beat their wives and terrorize their children.” John Evans

John Evans

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Times economist Anatole Kaletsky, wrote a perfectly New Labour mea culpa a couple of weeks ago. It went something like this:

“It pains me to say so but my economic forecasts for 2008 were entirely wrong. … However, it was all Hank Paulson’s fault.”

Gordon Brown’s new speechwriter, perhaps?

We are in for an exhilarating six months as the Czech Republic takes over the rotating European Union Presidency.

President Klaus is about as anti-EU as any Tory Eurosceptic. He has refused to sign the fraudulent Lisbon Treaty and been duffed up by the Euro mob as a result (see my piece here).

Now we have tidings of a truly awful sculpture (pictured above), commissioned by the wonderful Czechs for a major spot in Euroland, Brussels.

Apart from looking like a pile of rubbish — it’s supposed to be a map of the EU, with all its countries represented — the great thing about it is that Britain is missing completely. Oh the irony!

Apparently, British artist, Khalid Asadi, thought a no-show by the rowdy islanders would best represent our feelings about the whole shoddy enterprise. Would that the Turner Prize could be so relevant.

Give that man a Knighthood.

PS We’re now hearing that the “sculpture” may be a hoax, having been concocted by one man, not by 27 artists. Indeed, the British fellow, Khalid Asadi, is thought not to exist. What an excellent representation of the whole European Union project.

Give that man a Peerage.

What is it about greens? No, not Brussels sprouts, I mean the green politicos who berate us for almost anything we do nowadays.

Turn on the radio and there they are: near hysterical voices getting worked up about an aircraft, a car, a policy, a lightbulb. Whatever it may be, STOP! You’re destroying the planet.

The matter of light bulbs is the latest incursion into our generally pleasant existence. Hyperactive David Miliband volunteered the nation to be the first to switch from Edison’s neat little tungsten filaments to the ghastly mercury-filled, dimdowned, expensive contraptions that are now almost unavoidable and will be enforced by EU “law” soon.

The big stores have stopped selling the 100watt+ bulbs by voluntary agreement. Soon the rest will go.

Luckily, I’ve discovered a small, independent ironmongers run by little old ladies, and they’ve got stacks of the old-fashioned beauties. Thanks to them, I’ve got a crateful of bulbs stockpiled against further crackdowns by the Euro police.

Greens have long been associated with dictatorial governments, like the Nazis. They are naturally authoritarian by nature, ruling, if given the chance, by a stream of “Don’t do this, don’t do that” injunctions.

Shouldn’t we shunt them into oblivion by bringing back the “conservationists”, a much nicer class of folk?

I’ll let you into a dark secret. I’ve always wanted to own a hedge fund.

There’s something attractively racy about hedge funds and their owners. Dressed in Savile Row’s finest, with offices in Mayfair, they stroll along the Strand into the City … and heads turn. Shadowy figures shrink back into dark doorways as they pass. Another day short-selling the banks begins, sucking millions from their vaults with consummate ease — a bit like Count Dracula really.

And yet, the world’s most admired investor has a hedge fund. Warren Buffett, Sage of Omaha, who still lives in his first, modest marital home, is a hedgey. You can’t conceive of a more restrained investment policy than buying blue chips, but only if they are well-managed.

It was Buffett who put five billion into Goldman Sachs preference shares when the outfit was on its knees last year. Well managed they certainly are, despite the credit crisis. Didn’t they send Hank Paulson to the U.S. Treasury Department? What a relief that must have been. Warren B. is clearly a genius.

In Britain, being a hedge fund owner is like nipping over to Deauville to play the tables and splash out on the horses, never mind the fillies. King Edward VII was a regular sailor across the channel a century ago. Few Kings have been more popular amongst the poor and needy. Today, he would undoubtedly run a hedge fund.

So, if anyone out there has a hedge fund going cheap, I’m your man.

I should point out though that my experience of the industry doesn’t go much beyond knowing it’s not a branch of topiary.

I know it’s the weekend when I spend half an hour throwing out three-quarters of my morning newspapers before I’ve started reading them.

Out go the travel supplement, properties section, appointments, glossy magazines, CDs, motoring, sports, reviews, arts, gardening, cookery, advertising leaflets, packaging, sudoku and “Train Your Brain” booklets.

I’m left with the main paper itself — surprisingly slim these days — and the business section. I read the commentariat and skim through the news coverage, most of which I’ve consumed already on 24-hour TV news.

So, what do I get from the papers? Very little, except for a screen-free few hours of reading. My £2 ($3) Sunday Times, which yesterday weighed in at around 3lbs on the kitchen scales, provided me with nothing I couldn’t have read online at timesonline.co.uk.

They are now part of my exercise routine, however. At weekends, I walk to the Quay to buy the main titles, and stroll back along the riverbank, changing arms occasionally. It has become my weight-training workout, my upper-body, cardiovascular stressor session.

At around a fiver, that’s very good value, even if I do chuck most of them away.

John Evans

Welcome to the first issue of a new, occasional feature of short pieces in a diary format.

I watched part of the American Vice-Presidency debate last night.

Today I sat through a TV summary with the sound turned off. I find you can catch more of the psychological quirks and nuances if you cut out the noise.

A voiceless Sarah Palin seemed animated, keen and fresh, while old Joe Biden looked like a ghost. His age is much more apparent than McCain’s.

On balance, I would give it to Palin because she had a mountain to scale and she did it.

Who would I vote for? I never vote for ghosts.

I note Peter Mandelson is back in the British Cabinet as a reward for his worldwide experience. His Sarah Palin moment, they say.

Now remind me what he did for four years in the European Commission?

Ah, yes, he presided over the failure of the Dohar Round of world trade talks. He had a blistering feud with President Sarkozy — poignant memories of home, perhaps. He also helped Tony Blair and the German Presidency engineer the Lisbon treaty as a referendum-free zone. And there was that funny incident when European ports were piled high with Chinese shoes.

I can’t help thinking a hockey mom would have done better.

Amazingly, Syntagma will be three years old on the 20th of this month. In the constantly-changing kaleidoscope that is the internet I never thought it would last this long.

At the very least, I supposed I would sell it on before tackling something else. In the event, I am doing other things, but the old warhorse is still breathing fire — if less brimstone these days.

So, will there be wild celebrations and dancing in the street? ‘Fraid not, alas.

These are very different times compared with the heady economic climate back in 2005 when we started out.

Then “new media networks”, as we grandiosely called ourselves, were the lipstick on the pitbull. Everyone adored us — we were to be the new generation of Beaverbrooks and Northcliffes (ancient British newspaper proprietors). One of our brethren even sold itself to AOL for around $30 million. We were Masters of the Pixelated Universe.

In fact, the Murdochs and Gates’s, with MySpace and Spaces, used the technology to reinforce their offline dominance. New media turned out to be the saviour of old media.

As a result, advertising deserted the small-to-medium online operator, although you can still make a six-figure individual income if you know all the tricks.

At the moment new media is suffering a hiatus like everything else, while jumpy politicians sort out the credit drought and its ghastly knock-on effects. I must say, I thought we would be in a better place on our third birthday.

Never mind, there’s still 17 days to go.

At the Conservative Party conference in Birmingham this week, Tory bigwigs were ordered not to drink champagne in the bars in case it was interpreted as premature triumphalism.

What did the rascals do? They replaced the conspicuous champagne flutes with paper cups, from which they consumed prodigious quantities of the bubbly stuff.

With enterprise like that, they are definitely ready for a return to Government.

John Evans