Meet the Drummer

My first ever blog post was a picture of my noble hound Piper (rip).

Here are some pics of his successor, Drummer. Picked up from Inverness-shire a month ago.
It is too early to say if he can hold a candle to his predecessor, but the signs are good.

There is no shortage of character, he is correctly put together, and will make a decent-sized hound, judging by his feet and ears.

Photo number two (not posed) suggests peg-dog quality on the shooting field is perhaps not beyond him.

A joyous addition to the Idle household.

The State We Are In

Bill, it's 280 days since I last posted on here, so it has no readers except you. Here's a rant against some current pet hates:

I blame all governments since 1965 for the recent riots, especially the last Labour bunch of liars and hypocrites. If you open the borders to immigrants, don't be surprised if they take all the low-paying jobs and leave you with three million unemployed. If you pay British yoof to be unemployed drug dealers, chancers and anti-social urban scum, don't be surprised if they stay unemployed drug dealers, chancers, etc. If you offer a council flat to a 17 year old slag when she becomes pregnant, don't be surprised if she gets up the duff and embarks on the life journey of a single-parent on benefits.

This isn't rocket science.

I blame Greenspan and Brown for the economic meltdown. If you flood the world with cheap money, you know what the banks and government departments will do with it - you just don't know which wall they are going to do it against. Blaming the bankers is like blaming the syringe instead of the drug pusher. 'Sir' Mervyn King, Bernanke, Merkel and Sarkozy have proved themselves incapable of dealing with the situation and have lost the confidence of the markets. They should resign immediately.

I blame Cameron for the fact that almost all government policy is made worse by the coalition with the Liberals, who are utterly useless and are demonstrating why they have been out of power for nearly 100 years. Cameron should have walked it in 2010, but his liberal tendency and his belief in big government has resulted in a party that no longer offers a traditional Conservative policy choice. Oh, and he lied to us about an EU treaty referendum.

I blame Osbourne for, first, being such a twerp as to sign up to Brown's 2008-2011 spending plans, and second, for spending more money in each month of his first year as Chancellor than even the hapless Darling had spent the year before. Cuts? There ARE no cuts, unless you are a soldier, in which case there have been plenty. Osbourne must cut taxes and spending aggressively, starting today. Of course the 50% tax level should go, it doesn't raise any money, but people on £115,000 income in the 40% bracket are paying over 60% in direct taxation - this is madness!

The police? Probably the worst-led institution in Britain, and has been for many years. Why do we award a knighthood to people when we appoint them as Commissioner of the Met, rather than wait and see if they are any good? Ian Blair (LORD Blair now, can you believe it?) was a disaster and barely honest, and the latest one, Stevenson, nearly as bad. Neither deserves an honour. We should have given the job to the American with a good record from NY and LA. Should have been a no-brainer. And he wouldn't have demanded a knighthood.

The Olympics - a ruinously expensive exercise in narcissism by Seb Coe, who ludicrously was given a peerage for being the 'advisor' to William Hague's disastrous leadership (and judo partner, nudge nudge). Good runner, Seb (though for some reason I preferred Ovett), but completely useless at politics and now, we learn to our cost, incapable of budgetting for an Olympics and selling tickets to ordinary fans and taxpayers. Mark my words, 'Lord' Coe will never be short of a lucrative directorship from Olympic corporate sponsors, aka his cronies. He should be buried in the foundations of the Olympic Handball Arena, as an example to future enthusiastic eejits who come up with ways of spending £12bn of taxpayers' money.

The RFU chiefs? Cretins. National Rail companies? Thieves and incompetents. The BBC? Smug overpaid metropolitan champagne socialists. The Church of England? Poofs, political activists and moral cowards.

So that's the Villains. I might do a post on Heroes in a day or two, but it will be a short one.....

It's Me Human Riots, Innit?

Dwayne, 21, from Weston-super-Mare, is reading Immediate Gratification Studies at Keele University. He is pictured here at Millbank Tower, on his way to lobby his Member of Parliament.

Chief Inspector Lee Feckless, of the Metropolitan Police, defended his officers' stand-off tactics, saying "at this moment in time, and being mindful of the danger of the situation escalating, my officers were instructed to apply for triple time and start filling in a few forms ahead of what will be a busy period for them tomorrow, when they will be filing trauma reports and seeking time off on full pay to try try to come to terms with what all of us can agree has been a very difficult situation".

Banker VV Idle, of Mayfair, a passer by, said: "Personally, I'd give them a ten minute warning and then run the bastards down with mounted police and batons. Some of the chaps at work have suggested water canon with indelible ink, others have suggested tear gas and stun grenades. No one thinks that these people are really students, or that if they are, that there is any possible chance of them turning into productive members of society. One of our brightest young bankers suggested swapping them for intelligent, industrious and well-meaning immigrants who would like to enter this country, which we all agreed would be a double net benefit. An older colleague suggested shipping them to a remote Hebridean island and leaving them to fight each other like Lord of the Flies."

David Cameron is abroad.

Big Mistake

Boris reaches the parts that other Conservatives do not reach. This seems uncontestable, as measured by his victory in the London mayoral election and the wide spread of those votes. Sure, he pisses off some Tories with his inconsistencies and stunts (let alone being a shagger extraordinaire and therefore a cad to his long-suffering wife), but he has an ability that so obviously eluded Cameron at the last election- that of being able to secure a majority from a broad constituency.

One of the things that people like about Boris is that he is not overly political - he jumps in with both feet instead of dilly-dallying on the edge like so many politicians who are terrified of upsetting even a tiny minority.

But he has made a mistake over housing benefit and exacerbated it by using imagery which is just bonkers. With next year's re-election in mind, he has made a fool of himself. Kosovo-style social cleansing, my foot! Doubtless his quick mind hadn't quite approved it for compliance purposes as he started blurting it out, and he will have to retract this in toto, and issue an apology, I'll wager.

Here is the public opinion on the matter:

"...An ICM poll in June asked: "Do you support or oppose imposing a maximum weekly limit of £400 on Housing Benefit." Support was 68% with 23% opposed. Even among Labour voters there was strong support - by 57% to 35%.
A YouGov poll in August asked: "Here are some policies the coalition government have announced in their first hundred days. For each one please say if you oppose or support it?" Among them was: "Putting a limit on housing benefit." 72% expressed support. 17% said they were opposed. Again even among Labour voters there was strong support - by 53% to 35%."
(ConHome, Harry Phibbs)

Boris still sees himself as PM after Cameron, or certainly harbours such ambition. Well, if he makes it, it will be as leader of a party other than the Tories; he cannot have improved his appeal to those outside London with this stunt.

Digging Deep

Is it just me, or have our allies in Chile made a damn site better fist of this rescue than we might have done? The Minister for Mines (is his name really Laurence Fishburne?) appears competent, genuine and speaks better English than most residents of Blighty. He's pulled it off.

One's heart bleeds for the miner whose wife AND mistress were both waiting patiently at the top of the shaft, and became aware of each others' identity for the first time just days ago. Tricky reconciliation there, one fears.

The country which had the good sense to topple its Marxist leader and appoint Milton Friedman as economic consultant in 1973 has been an exemplar to the other basket case economies of South America for decades. This is why I like the country instinctively and am not surprised by its great feat of the past two months.

Red hot, Chile!

Baleful

Brilliant solo performance.

Peta, 23, from Essex

I am considering employing Peta in my investment advisory department. She has many of the attributes that some of our male entrepreneurial clients find attractive in a private banker.

And she is well briefed on precious metals' market behaviour.

I dare say she can provide a couple of tips for our clients that they will find most persuasive.

Feel free to add your own puns in the comments thread.

H/T FT Alphaville