Cicero's Songs

A Happy Holiday to all our readers.

After my comments yesterday about the determined attack on the Liberal Democrats coming from the right just as much as from the left, the scale of the moral rot at the Daily Telegraph becomes a little more shocking every day. After the theft of confidential information which exploded the MPs expenses scandal- which was illegal, but where prosecution was not undertaken, because the story was deemed to be in the public interest- the Telegraph got two of its associates to pose as constituents in order to gain private comments from Vince Cable about the coalition. It now appears that the newspaper then tried to suppress the most incendiary comments- about Rupert Murdoch- because the views that Dr. Cable was expressing were in the commercial interests of the Barclay brothers- the secretive tax exile proprietors of... the Daily Telegraph . OK, so Robert Peston then leaked the real story, but it seems pretty clear that the Telegraph should be facing some very real questions about their own

The Daily Telegraph, as a right wing Conservative newspaper, has shown no loyalty to the coalition. Their columnists, from Simon Heffer , to the increasingly foam flecked Ambrose Evans Pritchard preach a gospel of right wing cant that is definitely at odds with the more forgiving ethos of Coalition politics. The fact is that as much as in the Labour Party, there are many Conservatives who are bitterly opposed to the idea of political partnership- so it is no surprise that the Telegraph launched a sting against Vince Cable. He fell into the trap- foolishly- and has paid the severe political price of public humiliation. However the question is cui bono ? As the opinion polls show a slight but widening lead for the YES vote in the AV referendum next year, I fear that there will be ever further dirty tricks played against the liberal Democrats in order to derail the process and even destroy the coalition itself. Unless the Lib Dems can get PR for a newly elected Lords and at least AV f

It is something of a disappointment to note that the proposed HS-2 rail link will now not be linked to Heathrow . Any such link is now set to be delayed until the 2030s. So London will have a substantially weaker transport system than Paris for several decades into the future. A weaker infrastructure reduces competitiveness, and as we are seeing this week cutting corners - for example on snow cleaning equipment- eventually ends up costing far more money than it saves. Yet that has been the British way now for several decades. "Make do and mend" might have been a good slogan for the Second World War, it is not good enough in a world where China is building, in a single year, more highway than Britain has done in 30 years. Yet the root of the apparently necessary cost cutting on physical infrastructure remains the astonishing damage that Labour inflicted on the British social infrastructure. The imposition of absurd health and safety legislation combined with the diktat of an

It may be that the riots of last week are encouraging the British Trade Unions into making a major miscalculation. Len McCluskey, the leader of the largest Union, Unite, writes in the Guardian today suggesting that the Unions should be getting ready to "do battle" with the Coalition government. He praises the "magnificent Students"- in short he falls into just about every elephant trap that the Coalition would wish him to. Since 1979, Unions have been a declining and often unpopular force in Britain. Anyone who can remember the 1970s, remembers the endless industrial strife, largely led, we have since discovered, by Communist sympathisers who were even KGB agents, and occasionally directly funded by the Kremlin too. The fall of the wall may have put paid to outside meddling in British industry, but did not get rid of the muscular egos of the far left. That McCluskey is spouting rubbish is obvious even to his own side- the Guardian editorial is a nice line in paine

It was inevitable that the dictator would overstep the mark. He might- maybe- have even won the election without cheating, but that is not the Lukashenka way. Instead, just to make sure, he stuffed ballot boxes, and faked the election result. Yesterday, in the the frozen December temperature of the longest night, tens of thousands came to the centre of M'iensk to protest. They received the customary response: heavily armed riot police. Probably Lukashenka will get away with it, after all when Korea looks on the brink of real conflict, what is yet another stolen election in "the last dictatorship in Europe"? Yet the regime. with its Soviet flag and its KGB looks increasingly like a relic from another era. One day the white-red-white flag will fly again, but what will Belarus have to suffer until it happens? Only God, or possibly Oleksander Lukashenka himself, can forecast that with any accuracy.

What, on God's green Earth, has got into the British press? Essentially the news is that Winter is cold and that... oh dear people will have to change their travel plans. Admittedly that is mostly to do with the inadequate preparation by BAA and some slightly questionable decisions by BA. Does it really deserve this Olympic level whinge? Britain is becoming a spectacularly miserable place. The whinge factor in the press is about the same as your typical 6 year old- and it adds nothing and achieves nothing. The same nonsense as the Daily Mail's "No to Berlin Time", or "save the Queen's Head on Stamps". It is not that big a deal. It really isn't. And snow, even the metres of the stuff here in Tallinn, is actually... quite beautiful. It is stupid when the system can not cope with winter, which despite the RECORD LOW temperatures, does actually come every year. However the melodrama in the media is frankly rather pathetic. Grow up, you silly sods, and ge

Iain Dale has been the Queen Mum of blogging: despite being occasionally acid, even his political foes like him personally and his blog has been innovative and interesting. Although it has been clear that he was losing interest in the blog- far fewer articles in recent weeks- it is still a slight shock to see the end of one of the most popular British political blogs. Yet in many ways blogs are becoming quite old hat, and the days of a one man political blog, like this one, may be coming to an end. Writing this blog takes time, and it can be a struggle find inspiration and to avoid being repetitious. Yet all the time blog readers are demanding more content, not just more articles but now increasingly video and audio podcast content. I have not had time to learn the skills that would move this blog from being a series of articles into that more developed blogging scene. I have been content to treat this blog as a bit like a newspaper column, but it seems that the demand is now that blog

Harriet Harman is a fairly typical British Labour politician. She comes from a wealthy, even aristocratic, background and was sent to St. Pauls Girls School- a private school- before studying politics at York University and joining a pressure group. She married a Labour activist- Jack Dromey- who she met on the picket line at Grunwick, but has maintained her feminist credentials in small things, such as retaining her maiden name, but betraying her Socialist credentials in large things: by sending her children to grant maintained and grammar schools, while publicly opposing the access to these institutions by others. So far, so unsurprisingly hypocritical. As a minister she was reliably wrong on most issues: she supported keeping MPs expenses secret, she supported the Iraq war, she believes that undemocratic quotas are the best way to promote women and sexual minorities- as though they should be treated in the same way. All of this nonsense has been promoted with a straight face as a &

The scenes on London last night were a parody of a carnival. The Lords of Misrule who hijacked the student protest and turned it into a riot have totally destroyed the student cause. Attacking the Cenotaph- a particularly low thing to do- setting Parliament Square, and the Trafalgar Square Christmas tree, ablaze, and then attacking the heir to the Throne and his wife in their car. Oops. We all know that there are a few hundred anarchists and leftists in the UK who would turn the country into a Pol Pot style murder state if they could, and sure enough these nutters were out in force on the streets of London last night. However the collateral damage to the student cause is probably terminal. Whatever the rights and wrongs of the tuition fees issue, the students had their cause hijacked by thugs. The poor taste of attacking the statue of Churchill and desecrating the Cenotaph alienates the overwhelming majority in the UK who regard these symbols not as some "Imperialist Relic"

As the result of diplomatic pressure, we are told, the Ambassadors of perhaps 50 countries will not attend the award ceremony to give the Nobel peace prize to Liu Xiaobao. The Chinese are claiming something of a success. It is all rather disappointing, it means that China lines up with some of the very nastiest regimes on the planet. China has refused to let any close relative collect the prize, so for the first time since 1935, when the Nazis prevented Carl von Ossietzky from receiving the prize, the ceremony will not, in fact see the prize actually awarded. That is, in itself a pretty terrible state of affairs. What is even more bitter is the fact that the ideas that Liu Xiabao has been imprisoned for: democracy and pluralism, are actively discussed at the highest level in China- as we know from the recently published memoirs of the late Zhao Ziyang . The Chinese government is lying to its own people when it says that there is little international support for Mr. Liu. It is lying to

Life isn't fair is probably one of the earliest lessons we learn in life. Things don't always work out the way we want or indeed deserve. Yet one of the touchstones for Democracy is that the brightest should at least get a chance to compete with the merely privileged. If there can not be equality of outcome, then at least there should be equality of opportunity. What happens though, when it becomes increasingly obvious that no matter what your skills, there is and will never be even the pretence of fairness? In the UK now there is a crisis of education, but it is not the crisis that a bunch of articulate, self interested University students would have you believe. The crisis rests in the fact that unless you go to a fee paying, private school- which the English, perversely, call public schools- then your chances of social and economic success are a fraction of the small minority that has attended such schools. In some areas of the media and in the law the proportion of ex-publ

The general Election of 2010 gave no party what it wanted, All the parties lost, and that was clearly the message that the electorate deliberately sent to the political class. For the Liberal Democrats, the loss was doubly painful, since the party seemed to be at the point of making a breakthrough that could have changed British politics. In the end, the Liberal Democrats made no progress, despite the widely held view that the party and its leader, Nick Clegg, had fought the best campaign. Indeed several losses- and very near misses- were extremely painful. In that sense, the offer of a coalition that came from David Cameron was made to a party that was somewhat demoralised and very disappointed. Now the media, from Paxman down, can barely utter the word "Coalition" without a sneer. The naked hostility of the left that has been turned on the Liberal Democrats has been a shock. However, we are told, "welcome to politics as normal in the big league". Except it is n

The two men at the top are Mr. Vladimir Putin, leader of the Kleptocratic Russian Federation and Mr. Sepp Blatta a one time Swiss Bureaucrat who has destroyed the reputation of FIFA. The second picture is Blatta Orientalis, the Eastern Cockroach. I wonder if you can tell them all apart.

I can understand why Vladimir Putin is said to be "upset" that he and Dimitir Medmedev have been referred to as Batman and Robin. After all the Batman and Robin are the Good Guys! So, step forward please... The Riddler and The Joker.

The day after WikLeaks confirms the fact that Russia is so corrupt that it is impossible to separate the State from Organized Crime, the FIFA executive awards the criminal state the right to hold the World Cup in 2018. At the same time it gives the right to hold the 2022 Cup to Qatar- a state which has temperatures of over 50 degrees Celsius in the Summer months, when the tournament is played. Frankly It seems to me that of all the great countries that could have held the tournament: Spain/Portugal or England in 2018, the US or Australia in 2022, the elderly bureaucrats of FIFA have chosen the worst options. Why did they do this? Frankly- they followed the money. Whether or not the individual voters were personally corrupt- and we know that at least some of them were- the process certainly is corrupt. FIFA shamelessly followed the money. Frankly, having taken the money, they should now take the consequences. Choosing Qatar is daft, choosing Russia is sinister. A lot of questions will

The problem for Ed Miliband , after the car crash interview he did on the BBC Today programme last week, is that he is beginning to get a reputation of being an unlucky politician. The cock-up of a tweet from his spokeswoman: " ''Hypocrisy of Cameron pimping himself out in Zurich..." is precisely the kind of silly unforced error that lucky politicians do not succumb to. Of course, if in a few minutes, England were to win then Cameron looks like a very lucky politician indeed, while Miliband looks, well, like a loser. UPDATE: well. I suppose, predictably , England did not get the World Cup, but even that may be lucky, if the FIFA corruption scandal gains any further traction. After all awarding the world cup host nation status to a genuine Kleptocracy does kind of give the game away.