Author: Chris Snuggs

British Universities and Johnny Foreigner

British governmental ‘skills’ now being applied to British universities

THE GOLDEN GOOSE … Greed and the City killed off the financial golden goose – at terrible cost to ordinary people and the economy as a whole. With the problem compounded by government folly, Britain now faces years of debt and austerity to pay for it all. For the moment, the City is reeling, but at least we still have our Higher Education system, don’t we?

Well, errrrmmmm …… yes, we still have it for the moment.

Oxford University

We do – or perhaps did – have a great reputation for having world class universities. Rich foreign parents – including, of course, a good many whose source of income is highly dubious – naturally seek a good education for their children, which Britain in the past was able to provide and their country presumably couldn’t. For decades, a British degree was seen as a precious cachet of excellence in the  international paper-chase.

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What Jesus means to me.

I was recently asked this question:

“If you don’t believe in God, why will you be celebrating the birth of his son on 25th December?”

This was my answer:

Christmas was, I believe, celebrated long before Christ appeared. But quite apart from that, the story of Christ is totally and absolutely wonderful and inspirational. He is a sublime role model. He encapsulates all that is most pure and admirable about the human spirit.

Role model

He understood our frailty and did not condemn us for it but tried to show us a better way through his own example. He shied not from difficult questions, but always spoke what I take to be “the truth”, and he taught it with astonishing examples, in particular through his own actions and relations with others, friends or strangers.

He was not greedy or selfish in any way; he truly loved people and treated them all as his beloved brothers.

Personally, I love Jesus and I am more than happy to celebrate his life, to remember how remarkable he was, to get once more inspiration from his selflessness, purity and love for his fellow men. I celebrate his life also for his ability to inspire others to to write such wonderful stories, even if all are not totally true (who knows?).

Sadly, it’s just the extra-terrestrial bit that is a problem. But I can celebrate his life without that, can’t I?

I wish there were a God, that he’d sort the mess out, that he’d end our pain, that he’d speak to me. I wish this quite deeply. But that doesn’t mean I should invent him if he isn’t there, does it?

What IS completely clear to me is that if we could all follow Jesus’ example, (which can be summed up in the sublime message “Love thy neighbour as thyself.”) then we would indeed enjoy “Heaven on Earth”. That would be more than enough to be going on with ….

Does that answer your question?

By Chris Snuggs

The Fatuous Obsession with Celebrities

The humungously uninteresting saga of Tiger Woods’ infidelities

The press has been full in recent days of the Tiger Woods saga. I have followed this with a combination of astonishment and disgust and touched on it yesterday’s Post.

Astonishment? Not at Woods’ extramarital adventures. Frankly, I am astonished that anyone could possibly be astonished to learn of his frailties.

I must have been about 13 when I took an interest in John F Kennedy, mostly because of his assassination. As a young teenager I read and listened to the news over the coming months and gradually realised that this great American hero and hope for the future was a serial philanderer. And as I grew up I realised that this is the kind of behaviour that rich and powerful men in particular get up to.

I soon realised that some men simply give in to their sexual drives; integrity, promises and faithfulness just go out of the window. Once again – just like the British MPs who filched public funds by the £1,000s –  BECAUSE they can do it (for a while) they DID do it.

This is regrettable for stable marriages and the happy upbringing of children, but it is a fact. And so Woods’ antics were

Paul Newman

not the slightest bit surprising. In fact, what IS surprising is to hear of famous people who have NOT given in to basic urges, the most famous recent example being the much-loved and missed Paul Newman.

No, what astonished and disgusted me was the press interest in Woods’ philanderings. Of course, the media only publicize what they think people want to hear or read about, and this in order to sell more copies and rack up more advertising revenue. And as the media are not stupid, it clearly IS true that many people ARE interested in the sexual antics of famous people.

But what does this tell us about the seriousness of the human race? All this fuss over one more weak, unfaithful and ultimately boring husband when on the same day hundreds of thousands died of treatable disease, when goodness knows how many more tons of ice melted, how many more tons of CO2 were released into the air, how many more victims of the hellish North Korean regime there were?

He’s a famous golfer? Oh dear ….  someone good at putting a ball into a hole? This is supposed to be IMPORTANT?

Sadly, the whole episode is just another example of the fatuous obsession with celebrities, as if they are somehow more interesting or important than anyone else. No, my local postman is far more interesting than Tiger Woods, and I don’t think he cheats on his wife either.

And as for comment about the business wisdom of Woods not talking to the press? Oh dear again – one weeps. Why should anyone CARE whether he talks to the press or loses sponsors? Who GIVES a damn? Well, apparently, millions. And this is fairly depressing when there is so much else to worry about. And if big name sponsors of the once “Mr Clean” of world sport are now looking rather foolish, well I for one won’t shed any tears. They peddle fantasy, shallowness and envy; it’s time we had a reassessment of priorities and bit more common-sense and realism.

Please Mr Murdoch et al; give us a break from Tiger Woods; he is just nanoscopically irrelevant in the grand scheme of things and what on earth has his private life got to do with his golf anyway? But I expect we will have to suffer months of reading about the vast settlement his wife will get as his divorce is dragged through the courts and the media. Oh dear, I need a drink ……

Despairing of Kempten in the Allgau

By Chris Snuggs

News on a Sunday

A round up of this strange world that we all live in.

[In fact Chris wrote this on Sunday, 13th but due to the backlog of LfD posts to be published, it has been held until today, the 20th. The points are still as valid. Ed.]

BRITISH LABOUR PARTY WASTE ON FRIPPERY:

From the UK newspaper, The Daily Mail.

Judges in charge of Britain’s controversial new Supreme Court have been provided with robes they will hardly ever wear at a cost of £137,956 to the taxpayer.

The hand-crafted black brocade robes – embroidered with real gold thread – will not be worn by the 12 Supreme Court Justices in normal session.

They will be donned only perhaps twice a year for ceremonies such as the State Opening of Parliament or the beginning of the legal year. The rest of the time, the judges will wear everyday suits.

A snip at £140,000 ($224,000) Photographer – Ron Coello

It’s only money …. plenty more where that came from…

BRITISH POLITICS: Few things are more pathetic than the Liberals‘ current poll rating of 17%, with Labour on 26% That the worst government in the history of the world is still way ahead of the Liberals is of course a tribute to the lunacy of Labour voters, who seem not to understand the terrible damage this govt has done. Still, some of them have done very well under Labour: doctors, judges, high-ranking civil servants, consultants …. all more or less bribed with the people’s money.

Lib-Dems must be very depressed; if you can’t get a decent poll-rating when up against this motley bunch of venal, pompous, pretentious and incompetent misfits then you wonder really what the point of their party is.

Democracy?

Still, you get the government you deserve, so they say. Except that the British voting system is hopelessly undemocratic. In the next election a vote for the Lib-Dems is probably going to be wasted, risking the danger of letting Brown sneak in despite everything.

As for UKIP, it is a perfectly tenable position to want to get out of the EU. I’d guess that 30% of the electorate would want this, and that’s a very conservative estimate. Yet they have NO CHANCE WHATSOEVER of getting ANY representation in parliament.

This is not democracy, but of course it suits the two dinosaur parties very well indeed.

TIGER WOODS: what a pathetic, sordid saga this is. Not his bedroom antics, but the media obsession with it. People are dying all over the world of treatable diseases, of inhuman treatment at the hands of the North Koreans or others. Democracy is destroyed by religious nutters in Iran, millions more tons of ice melt, while politicians bleat uselessly (and expensively) in Copenhagen (I note they didn’t choose Scunthorpe! Might not have got such a good turnout!)

OIL: Oh, and on the climate front and the importance of reducing emissions I note that the Iraqi government is predicting oil output to rise to 12 million barrels a day within a few years – the same as Saudi Arabia.

That IS good news!!!!! … the British Labour government will hit us with every stealth and non-stealth tax you can imagine “to save carbon” and pay for yet more consultants and managers while the rest of the world greedily sups up billions more tons of oil.

Apparently, this has been a bumper year for oil discoveries …. you couldn’t make it up! An extra-terrestrial observer must be scratching his head wondering how the universe could have spawned up such a bizarre species.

Yet the press is full of Woods ….. and because he is good at golf … hitting a ball into a hole, a skill of such nanoscopically-sized irrelevance to the world’s problems. What sort of mentality is it that is even interested in yet another, crass, boring superstar who has failed to resist the temptations that money brings?

JFK was the great hero who would save the world but turned out to be just another, faithless, lying philanderer. Who can have any illusions since the days of Marilyn Monroe and the extinguished candle?

OBAMA PEACE PRIZE: The surreality of this obsession with over-sexed but hyper-boring celebrities is matched only by that involved in the award of the Nobel Peace Prize to Obama. What exactly has Obama actually DONE?

Nobel prize winner

Crucially, there is practically NO change in the Middle East (except the major change for the good brought by the reviled George Bush and Tony Blair! the world is nothing if not full of irony); the USA still cravenly supports Israel, which CONTINUES to build and/or enlarge settlements, which denies any possibility of ever putting right some of the wrongs of the past (Palestinian exiles, appropriation of their land, stealing of their capital and so on – even the West Bank roadblocks are mostly still in place.)

Yet even in the pathetic there can be humour, as when he said that to bring peace the USA had to make war, or words to that effect.

Yes, he is of course right, but it was still funny. I wonder what Mother Theresa would have said? And Nelson Mandela? He had to sweat out decades in prison preaching non-violence to earn his NPP, while Obama only had to get elected to get his. Truly the triumph of hope over reality.

Perhaps hope is all there is left. I nearly said “we have left”, but then I realized that I haven’t actually got much myself.

By Chris Snuggs

BA flies to the Brink

British Airways

I earnestly hope that we are not about to witness the crashing disappearance of what only a few years ago was one of Britain’s relatively few major world class businesses. It is said that those whom the Gods seek to destroy they first make mad, and the intention of BA cabin staff to launch a strike over the busy Christmas period would seem to be a clear sign of insanity.

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The Shame of Tibet

Transcripts from our bug in the Ministry of Misinformation, Whitehall, London

Good morning, Perkins ….

If you say so, Sir

Oh Dear …. I can tell there’s something wrong, Perkins … you’d better get it off your chest.

It’s this Tibet business, Sir, …

Tibet! Goodness me, Perkins! You do worry about such small things!

I wouldn’t exactly call Tibet, small, Sir.

But it’s thousands of miles away, Perkins, in a country of which we know little, and the British people even less.

Perhaps, but no man is an island and all that …

Perkins, we do have work to do, you know!

But nobody takes the Tibetans’ rights, seriously, Sir.

Well, it depends what you mean by “seriously”, Perkins.

But they are an occupied people! The Chinese Han are ethnically-swamping them! If the Americans did that to the Canadians, for example, there’d be all hell let loose …

Oh come, come, Perkins! You can’t compare Canadians to Tibetans! The latter are an underdeveloped, uncivilized race! The Chinese are bringing them into the modern world. They’re investing billions in the country.

Yes, to turn Tibet into a part of China, with Han culture …

But it is part of China, Perkins.

Only because the Chinese seized it by force. What right do they actually have to rule Tibet? Until they started moving millions of Chinese into the country there were practically no Chinese there at all. It was a thousand-year-old and totally different – and to the Chinese Han – alien culture.

What right, Perkins? Well, I’m sorry to disillusion you, but their bigger army gave them the right and after all, possession is nine-tenths of the law!

But they are so arrogant. And so-called democracies don’t say a word. India has even banned a march by a few hundred exiled Tibetans. The west continues to trade with and enrich China so that it can buy arms to oppress its minorities. It’s sickening, Sir.

Only if you have a conscience, Perkins. I’m sorry to see you are still afflicted by conscience.

I don’t think you are taking this seriously, Sir.

I am, Perkins; it’s just that nothing can be done.

You mean, nothing that doesn’t hurt us a bit, don’t you Sir?

Well, that goes without saying, Perkins! Do you really think the British consumer is going to accept to have to pay more for his DVD-recorder just to put a bit of pressure on China!!!

I’m sorry, Sir. It stinks. China supports North Korea, and they’ve just executed 15 people just for trying to flee the country. When North Koreans do get out of the hell of their regime, the Chinese often send them back. And yet we allow them to hold the Olympic Games! To set doves free in a gesture of peace! It is horrible, Sir.

Yes, Perkins. It’s called politics.

But it is preposterously hypocritical, Sir. Have you read “The Universal Declaration of Human Rights”?

Not recently, Perkins …

Well, what about this bit in Article 21?

The will of the people shall be the basis of the authority of government; this will shall be expressed in periodic and genuine elections which shall be by universal and equal suffrage and shall be held by secret vote or by equivalent free voting procedures.

Well, what about it, Perkins?

Well, members of the UN are supposed to subscribe to that, aren’t they, Sir? But a majority don’t, do they? China certainly doesn’t, does it?

I’m not sure I can answer three questions at once, Perkins. But I’ll give it some thought over the weekend …….

And what are you doing over the weekend, Sir?

As it happens, Perkins, I’m playing golf with the Chinese Ambassador …..

By Chris Snuggs

Son of Gaddhafi …..

Does international politics have to be this obtuse, to put it kindly?

Those that don’t follow the British Press closely may have missed the news that Peter Mandelson, the unelected Lord appointed to run Britain’s Trade and Industry Department, was guest at  a shooting party with the son of Muammar Gaddhafi .  Here’s how the Guardian Newspaper ran the start of the article:

Peter MandelsonThe Spectator has reported that Peter Mandelson joined Colonel Muammar Gaddafi’s son at a country house shooting party. Photograph: Shaun Curry/AFP/Getty ImagesHe [Mandelson] talked of being “intensely relaxed” about the filthy rich, and no one could say that Lord Mandelson doesn’t like their company. After twice facing criticism for consorting with billionaires in Corfu, it emerged tonight that the business secretary joined Colonel Muammar Gaddafi‘s son at a country house shooting party.

Mandelson and Saif al-Islam al-Gaddafi were guests at Lord Rothschild’s Waddesdon Manor in Buckinghamshire, the Spectator said. The magazine reported that Cherie Blair was also in attendance, although neither she nor Mandelson are reported to have taken part in the shoot.

Let us be clear about this. The Gaddhafi regime is the antithesis of what the free world believes in, namely a dictatorship that has ruled by iron fist for decades and was indeed part of the axis of evil.

Of course, it suddenly became non-evil overnight, mostly because it gave up (or appeared to give up) trying to develop a nuclear bomb.

Leaving aside the fact that making a bomb does not per se make you evil, (unless we are to consider that the US, France, Britain, Russia, Israel are “evil”, too) the point is that the regime has not changed in its fundamentals since the old black and white days of George Bush.

So once again, the question arises, why are western leaders cosying up to these scum?  This  is a strong word, but do we or do we not agree that dictators are scum? Evil people who deny basic freedoms to their peoples?

Do you know any benevolent dictators? White-bearded philosophers out of the Plato/ Solomon mould? I sure don’t …..

Of course, these scum regimes are all in the UN, even though I had thought that all members had to sign up to the Universal Charter of Human Rights. Apparently not, however, another piece of humungous hypocrisy.

The Gaddhafi regime is the same one that is guilty of numerous terrorist offences, including Lockerbie (though there is distinct murkiness surrounding the whole saga) and in Britain the shooting by a Libyan Embassy staff member of Yvonne Fletcher, a British policewoman, for which nobody has been brought to justice even though the British police are said to know who was responsible.

However, leaving aside the question of how to deal with nasty dictatorships (and is joining shooting parties with the heir apparent really the right way?) I am fascinated by the apparent idiocy of Lord Mandelson in associating with these people.

Exactly which segment of the British population – let alone American – is he going to try to sell this to? America may not interest him overmuch, but one imagines that he wishes to prolong his career in British politics. If so, he has a funny way of going about it.

His image will take an enormous bashing, and Mandelson is, or used to be, totally focused on image, spin, PR and “the message”. What message does the thought of him jollying along with the son of the dictator of an evil regime convey to us? Has the spin guru of the British Labour Party lost his rudder?

Of course, there could be a hidden (or rather obvious) agenda. It could all be to do with sshhhhh ……MONEY. Is he therefore working tirelessly against his conscience (and knowing this will do him great personal damage) in the  financial if not moral interests of the British people (who weren’t of course asked if they want their country cosying up to dictators) or could it be – oh Dear, are we being too cynical? – that he has a more personal interest in mind?

Does he deep down seek to become as rich as the man he helped to sell to the British public, Tony Blair himself, who incidentally is about to be embroiled in a potentially-devastating enquiry into the Iraq war?

And unfortunately, the news broke on the day after we discovered that Abdelbaset Ali al-Megrahi, found guilty of the Lockerbie bombing and released because he was dying, has in fact survived for three months with no apparent end in sight. Yes, only three months ago Gaddhafi bambino was helping to arrange the hero’s welcome that Megrahi received in Libya. As is well-known, Mandelson met Gaddhafi’s son one week before the alleged deal was done for Megrahi’s release, so they are old jet-set mates.

We believe in “freedom” and “democracy”, don’t we? We may have to share the planet with dictatorial scum, but do our representatives really have to grovel and sup with them?

It doesn’t feel good to be honest ….

By Chris Snuggs

The Future of the British National Health Service

Is Britain’s Health Service now terminally ill.

Near the end of November came more bad news from the British National Health Service, an institution that many Brits both love and hate at the same time.  The truth is that the NHS has simply become too big, too bureaucratic and is in many areas failing though over-regulation and poor management.

Not that it lacks managers of course;  I believe there are more managers per bed than in any other country of Europe.

Why is it that the more managers you have the worse the overall performance ends up? Too much working by committee and passing the buck for failure, perhaps?

It has to be broken up; vast organisations just don’t work. Smaller is beautiful. I feel confident the world will eventually understand this; already there are serious calls for the big banks to be split up after the credit fiasco and just recently we read about  calls for some of the big British supermarkets to be ‘smallered’. This is significant, coming from one of the “Neo-Conservative” gurus likely to have great influence in the next British government.

Have we passed through a period of worshipping size, power, takeovers, mergers, money, financial domination, vast stock options, fees for lawyers, obscene bonuses and instant gratification?

Economies of scale are one thing, but at some point other factors reduce their value to society as a whole. The bigger an institution of any kind the greater the possible abuse. And sadly, at some time or other there will be abuse, as we have seen so often.

The period of “Big is Beautiful” may be ending, and not before time.

By Chris Snuggs

The Mystery of the Disappearing Ethics

The Dubai debt crisis raises fundamental questions.


UK banks account for half the £60billion of global loans to the debt-laden emirate, new statistics show.

Well done British banks ….. loads of loans built on sand … I suppose the words “conservative” and “prudent” didn’t get printed in the Banking Terminology dictionary?

So Britain, that Global Giant of the banking world, has half the dodgy loans? British banks are therefore as daft as the rest of the world put together? (Can someone check my maths!)

Oh, and why exactly were the banks lending money to SORDID DICTATORSHIPS? Would we have lent billions to Hitler’s Germany in 1937? What on earth happened to ETHICS in the financial world? I suppose lending to POOR countries who need it rather than the nasty, venal, corrupt dictatorships of the Middle East was right off the radar?

There is an obsession with the “Human Rights” of immigrants and others in Britain, but a complete and utter turning of  blind eyes to the slavery going on in the Middle East, as if it doesn’t concern us because it’s in “another far-off country of which we know little”. (Neville Chamberlain’s shameful explanation of his inaction over Hitler’s annexation of the Sudetenland in Czechoslovakia in 1936.)

Sorry, but “No Man is an Island” …. we can’t sign the UN Declaration of Human Rights on the one hand and then blithely lend money (the PEOPLE’S money) to countries that are treating people so terribly.

I hope Dubai goes bankrupt and our cretinous banks with it so that we can start again with people’s banks that have a modicum of honour and decency and are prepared to invest in democracies, not insanely greedy property developments based on dictators’ idle fantasies.

It wasn’t much different with Sadaam Hussein, whatever you think of the invasion. This was a man who – just to take one example – gassed to death 5,000 innocent men, women and children in one single village alone. Yet countries in the “free world” were secretly queuing up to do deals with him. One British government MP even went there and shook his hand, the hand that consigned hundreds of thousands of people to a horrible death.

Ecology? Apart from anything else, Dubai’s carbon emissions are pro rata 250% higher than the US, so much power goes into air-conditioning and desalination. Once again, the left hand doesn’t know or care what the right hand is doing. A British minister tells us to stop eating meat to save the world while British banks simultaneously rush to finance a humongously-profligate and obscenely-elitist project in the desert.

I sometimes wonder if we really deserve to survive Global Warming. Will it be God’s way of cleansing the Earth of an aberrant experiment in free will?

By Chris Snuggs

More French Anglo-Saxon Bashing

Pres. N Sarkozy

“Do you know what it means for me to see for the first time in 50 years a French European commissioner in charge of the internal market, including financial services, including the City (of London)? I want the world to see the victory of the European model, which has nothing to do with the excesses of financial capitalism.” (As quoted by The Daily Telegraph.)

“Victory”? So we were at  war, then? Oh dear ….. you are 60 years out of date old boy, or perhaps 500 years! Does Agincourt still hurt so much?

One has for some time had the feeling that Europe’s leaders are a mediocre lot, with “statesmen” being very thin on the ground. Unfortunately, this impression has just been reinforced by Nicholas Sarkozy’s outrageous, finger-wagging gloating about the appointment of Michel Barnier to the EU post of  Internal Markets Commissioner.

From this lofty position this mighty expert on world financial markets threatens to regulate the City to “European” (aka French) “‘standards”.  The rationale will be to avoid another financial crisis by “reining in” the banks. The not-so-hidden agenda will be to sap the vitality of London so that Paris and Frankfurt in particular can cream off some of the rich pickings.

This is stupid and reprehensible for a number of reasons.

Firstly, any cutting-off of the City at the knees will not result in financial firms emigrating to sclerotic, over-regulated, pretentious, high-cost, overblown Europe but to the USA or elsewhere. True, the US is reeling at present, but I for one won’t bet on the mighty beast remaining on its knees for very long. And when it does rise up again, Europe will still be the same old bureaucratic, state-interfering, suffocating, high-tax business and financial environment that we know and hate.

Moreover, Sarko’s diatribe is extraordinarily partisan. If London’s City is a world financial centre, then this is to Europe’s advantage as much as Britain’s.  Sapping its vitality will hurt Europe, ensuring that more financial business flows elsewhere. In the electronic age, it is not fine French wines or German Wurst that will keep these companies in France or Germany.

And what sort of pro-Europe message are such comments going to send to ordinary British voters, who all polls suggest would actually vote to leave Europe if given a choice, which of course they will not be? Britain has lost almost all its once-mighty fishing industry, still pays to support French farming, has almost no indigenous motor industry any more … but at least we have the City. If Sarko’s hatchet-man gets his way, it will be regulated to its knees …..

Sarkozy’s comments were the most prattish, partisan, nationalistic and stupid comments ever made by one of the principal leaders of Europe. And apart from anything else, Barnier has to swear to uphold the interests of ALL EUROPE when taking up his post; the fact that he is French should be IRRELEVANT. The nationalistic cynicism of Sarkozy’s comments are breathtaking. There have  been frantic efforts by Barnier himself to backtrack in recent days, as London seethed at Sarko’s comments. But you can’t undo the past. Sarkozy said what he said; one has no reason to suppose he didn’t mean it.

Yes, there have been terrible excesses, but not all the City is to blame. And German and Franco banks hardly kept their snouts  out of the trough, almost ALL European banks having been clobbered,  so inter-connected is the banking world. And I for one haven’t forgotten the shameful fiasco at French Credit Lyonnais a few years ago, nor the recent £5 billion loss ($8 bn) by a rogue trader at Société Générale two years ago.

“The European Model”? It is laughable ……. Continental Europe has nothing to teach us about creating a healthy economy and sustainable jobs.

Sadly, Sarkozy’s narrow-minded nationalism have been matched by the stupefying incompetence of the British government in failing to block the appointment of Barnier, a well-known regulator à la française and the last thing Europe needs. We need reforms, yes, but throwing the baby out with the bathwater was never a good idea, and nor is it now.

And Mr President – less of that finger-wagging please …..

By Chris Snuggs