No Boots on the Ground in Syria

The Foreign Secretary and Dave would like to pretend that there would be no boots on the ground in Syria; however militarily that is pretty likely.

Weekly Poll Lowdown

Red Ed is going to have to make a tough choice soon because he wants to reshuffle his cabinet. So short of getting rid of all these useless pillocks, you would choose Ed Balls to the one to go first from the Shadow Cabinet. This was closely followed by Chuka Umunna the Shadow Anti-Business Secretary who is supposed to criticise Vince Cable, the current Anti-Business Secretary.  Douglas Alexander and Yvette Cooper will sleep soundly with knowledge that they will not go if it was up to the masses as to whether they should keep their jobs.

 Red Ed: Who should I fire to take the attention off my obvious failings?

Who should most be sacked from the Shadow Cabinet?

Ed Balls	33%
Harriet Harman	6%
Douglas Alexander	0%
Yvette Cooper	0%
Sadiq Khan	11%
Stephen Twigg	6%
Andy Burnham	6%
Liam Byrne	11%
Chuka Umunna	28%

Total votes: 18

I don't think Ed Balls is really the worst in the Shadow Cabinet on performance. Ed Balls hasn't done what Labour really need at the moment and that is to put together the basics of an economic plan which sounds reasonable to the public. The public could except a plan which increased levels of spending in certain areas if a commitment to spend the same as the Coalition was made. However, Labour want to keep on borrowing out of the twisted economic experiences of Ed Balls and that's a major root of the problem for Labour's unelectability. But Ed Balls at least does something, and although it's not very good it is broadly left wing. The Unions are at least happy with Balls, even though he is a balls up.

 Ed Ball's economic message is patchy at best.

The person I think should get the sack has done nothing since becoming Shadow Home Secretary. Yep, none of you voted for her, but I would sack Yvette Cooper. She received the most votes of all Shadow Cabinet Ministers at the Labour Party Conference yet what has she actually done? She's criticised the government over the riots blaming it on cuts before they took place. And what else after that? Theresa May has tackled Abu Qatda. What did Yvette say? Nothing. Immigration has been a big topic for the Home Secretary where, despite immigration currently down by a third*, there have been lots of mistakes. But not a peep out of Yvette Cooper.

What Yvette Cooper is is a great disappointment. Someone who should be a key member of the Shadow Front Bench, but is actually as important to the Labour party as Ken Clarke to the progress of Euro-scepticism. Despite all the hype she has done bugger all. 

 The Great disappointment.

In my opinion this makes her worse than Stephen Twigg whose opposition to Coalition reforms is also non-existent. It could be this is because they're super reforms, which I believe is actually the case. But that means that if you want a good education department vote Conservative. This is obviously not the message that Stephen Twigg wants. But his saving grace from being the worst member of the Shadow Cabinet is the fact that there is no hype around him, he is expected to perform averagely at best.

 Even Stephen Twigg is surprised at how bad he actually is.

So there you are, if you're reading Ed don't look to Great Balls Up as a fall man choose his wife as the first to be fired from your socialist squadron. He won't fire her though, he's too weak.

 All voters need to know about the Labour leader.

Vote in the New Poll on the Sidebar.

*Note I say currently because lots of Romanians and Bulgarians are about to take a permanent holiday in the UK.

Western War in Syria?

Well it seems that the war in Syria has reached a decision point for the West over whether it should intervene or not (we are already probably doing this with spooks in minor ways but that is not a big game changer). President Obama and the Foreign Office made the mass use of chemical weapons a point of no return. It looks like they may do this soon. We have set ourselves up however for a near impossible task and one which is unlikely to end well. The Syrian people are the only ones that can bring about democracy.

 It's only decision time for the West because we set a rather arbitrary decision point of chemical weapon use by Assad.

We are about to fight a three way war in Syria against Assad and against Islamists which are fully entrenched in the Syrian Opposition forces. The Opposition has no clear objectives other than to bring down Assad. There is no clear side and this it is impossible to differentiate on the battlefield. Who is going to bring about a liberal democracy and who is out for a Islamist dictatorship? We don't know. If we intervene we'd have to fight off Assad then weed through the Opposition and take out the Islamists. Essentially our task would be either to stage an invasion of Syria. Or to end the civil war going on now and then fight another one. 

 Opposition forces wanting a Islamic State are not the sort of people democracies should back.

Militarily our fight would also be impossible. We will be fighting enemies that are being armed by Russia, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Iran. Assad's force would be the hardest to win against because of the strong air power he possess. Furthermore, if he is willing to use chemical weapons against his own people he will almost certainly use them against any interventionist forces. These forces would have to be composed of ground troops as well as planes based in Cyprus. A Syrian style air umbrella and the occasional weapons drop will not work because the Opposition forces are much weaker than in Libya and Assad's army is much stronger than Gaddafi's. It's very unlikely we could win, so the conflict would just continue.

Gaddafi for political reasons kept his military very weak. Assad for political reason has made the Syrian army and air force very strong.

And speaking of the outcomes, what are our objectives? Is it to protect civilians from dying? If that was the case we should have intervened at least one and half years ago when it was clear this was going to become a civil war. Nor is our intervention going to stop more deaths because more people are going to die in the future whether Assad or the Opposition win. If Assad win's he will ruthlessly oppress Opposition supporters. If the Opposition win there will be a split and another civil war, or at the very least mass civil disturbance for years. 

There is also the risk, which is greatly underplayed, that this whole civil war could spill over. In its simplest form this could be because of the mass movement of refugees into Turkey, Iraq, Lebanon and Jordan. The war could follow the Syrian people when Assad get's desperate. It is worth remembering Assad attacked Turkey. 

 Intervention in Syria is going to be like putting a match in the tinder box of the Middle East where a Cold War already rages.

But when looking at the Syrian war it is clear to see that this is a proxy war going on between Saudi Arabia (and co.) against Iran. These countries having been involved in a serious Cold War for a number of years as to who controls the Middle East. Intervention in that fight is likely to cause a conflict that would seriously implode the region. This will put the safety of our allies in the democratic Iraq, Israel and NATO ally Turkey at serious risk. We too will not escape this war as in defence of our allies we'd have to fight Iran who would respond on the battlefield as well as in our streets. It is clear such  problems would occur because Turkey hasn't set up protection zones in Syria or gone to war with Assad when he attacked them. This Turkish inaction is caused by the realisation of very likely Iranian attacks, despite intervention in Syria being fully discussed and having many advantages for the Turks.

 We do not want to act in Syria just to save lives. We want to act in Syria to bring about democracy.

What we really want and what the Syrian people as a whole want is to have a new democratic government in Syria. If that is the case it would be pretty stupid to gamble, with loaded dice against democracy. The Opposition may choose to appoint a new Assad. What has to happen in the Opposition, if they wish to win this war, is they have to become organised and that involves an internal power struggle where we will find out whether the Opposition is going to be made up of liberals backing democracy or Islamist Terrorists backing a dictatorship.

It is for the Syrian people to decide of what type of government they want after Assad has fallen. This decision should have been taken early on in the formation of the Syrian Opposition if they wanted a chance of winning and forming a government after Assad's downfall. This chance now seems to be fading away.

But there is another opportunity with this new turning point of mass use of chemical weapons. Gas attacks show to the Syrian population that Assad is becoming more desperate not because a over 1,000 people died. Bear in mind that over 100,000 people are sadly dead already. The Syrian people will be more so looking for an alternative to Assad so an organised and clearly democratically motivated Opposition would get support that could crumble the regime. This move is one for the Syrian people to make whether they are civilians or in the Opposition. It is not one we can help with either, and certainly we cannot help by intervention.

This was the most important move made in Libya with the setting up of the National Transitional Council as it showed clearly that a Libya without Gaddafi would be one of democracy. Our intervention did save the city of Benghazi, but it was the Libyan Opposition that spilt blood and did the fighting. Our light touch still caused some problems in the new democratic Libyan Government. It didn't allow for the sorting out of tribal differences that a longer period of war may have allowed for. Overall however this is not an unsolvable problem and Libya, unlike Syria, is likely to have a successful form of democracy. 

People need to free themselves. Syria is only solvable by the West if it intends to invade and set up a proxy government which it intends to defend. This of course completely disregards the fact that militarily this scenario is impossible. If we could defeat Assad we'd be in there for a much longer period than Iraq. Oh and as an added bonus we could cause a regional war with Iran. It's the people of Syria's choices, both civilians and those in the Opposition, that can bring about a Syrian democracy. 

The choice to have democracy can only  be brought about by people fighting hard for it themselves.

B J Woodhouse

Will Boris Johnson stand to become PM? This is the political question that follows the Mayor of London everywhere he goes. But after several months of detente between Dave and Boris, some political pundits are coming to the conclusion that Boris will never challenge the PM and may stay as the Mayor of London. But all those theories have been blown out of the water because Boris now says he wants to pursue a career as a romantic novelist under a P G Woodhouse pseudonym.

 Boris now wants to become a full time author.

Boris is currently in Australia and, as well as backing Tony Abbott and the Liberal Party against the socialists of Oceana, opened the Melbourne Writers Festival. There it was reported that Boris said he "may take up my pen. I would love to write a genuinely brilliant, rip-roaring airport book."

In Boris' novel the 72 Virgins there is a 'hapless member of parliament' who rides a bike.

Boris has already written many books from autobiographies to histories and science fiction to a political comedy which contains a 'hapless member of parliament' who rides a bike. I wonder who he based that character on? I have read Boris' book 'Johnson's Lives of London' and I rate it pretty highly.

 I recommend this book highly. Go buy it.

Boris said in Australia that "Romantic Fiction ... could be next" where he would write under the Pen Name of Rosie M. Banks, a recurring P G Woodhouse character, and that his book would have "sinister-looking orchids on the cover ... In a trance, you will buy this blockbuster ... and I hope to be somewhere quietly raking it in."

So there we are, we now know why Boris has recently said that Dave will be PM for a 'very long time'. Make sure you buy Rosie M. Banks' next book. 

 Dave is very happy that Boris has announced to take up writing full time.

It Will Cost You

"There is no such thing as a free lunch" said Milton Friedman and many other people before and after him. And he is right. If the Labour Party gain power in 2015 everyone in the country is going to see their costs rise dramatically.

Under the last Labour government we had lots of money spent in the country on benefits, the NHS and education, to name but a few areas. What were the results? With benefits the Government gave people more money than most working people could dream of. There were 13,000 deaths covered up by the Labour Health Secretary, Andy Burnham. Our education system also decreased in quality and fell down the world rankings.

The main problem was that Labour just threw money at things and thus it was virtually all wasted. But that money had to come from somewhere so if it wasn't through borrowing, which is now a £19,000 weight around every person, it was through tax rises. Under Labour, especially towards the end when the current Shadow Front Bench were in control, petrol prices continually went up, the 10p tax rate was scrapped and council tax was raised 27 times.

The days of Gordon Brown we saw the biggest assault on people's cost of living ever made by a Government.

And now they want to do it again. Under Ed Miliband, as Gordon Brown's Energy and Climate Change Secretary, energy bills doubled and now he wants to increase them again by carbon targets which will force even more people into fuel poverty. This is on top of the their continual support for increasing subsidies for inefficient energy sources such as wind turbines which this government has cut. 

Petrol too is another area Labour will target. If Labour had won in 2010 it would be 13p more expensive at this moment to fill up a car. There would still be 6 more planned fuel duty rises by Labour after 2015 had it not be for the Conservatives in Government. What's to say Labour won't bring these back in 2015.

It has already been signalled by the markets that Labour's plans for more debt will raise borrowing rates and that will have effects on all sorts of things. The hardest hit from that would be those with a mortgage who will see £1,000 added to their bills if borrowing is raised by only 1%. It could of course be higher.

Labour also want to cap pension spending which means no more Triple Lock mechanism for pensioners that they would always see a pensions rise. The Triple Lock means that pension will rise by either the amount of inflation, the average rise in earnings or 2.5%, whichever is the highest. That's all set to go with Red Ed at the helm.

Of course Council Tax will also rise under Labour, like it has done in nearly every single Labour controlled council. Labour councils have seen a doubling in their bills of late whilst the average Conservative council reduced their tax bill by 9.3%. When Ed Miliband says he is opposed to these freezes it is clear we will return to the past where council tax rose and rose and then rose again.

This of course forgets the main problem with a Labour Government and that's an increase in debt. It is calculated that each family would owe just shy of £3,000 extra if Labour are allowed to borrow £50 billion more as they have planned. Where will that money be spent? Well we can tell from their opposition to a benefits cap that benefits will rise. It's also clear that more waste of time infrastructure projects will continue like HS2. Imagine a HS3 or 4, this country would be broke pretty soon. 

But how much will this add up to for you? Well you can now find out at http://costoflabour.com/ where it asks you a few simple questions about what you do and calculates exactly what a Labour Government would cost you. Some people could be over £2,000 worse off! I tried it and if I was still a student, which I won't be shortly after the next general election, I would have to pay £125 extra (plus the debt of course). But  when I leave Nottingham it will be a sad day in two ways because my costs would rise to £519. Excellent. If you are planning to vote Labour you may need to start saving now. 

I'm critical of most government moves to raise the cost of living. I do it when the Conservatives back HS2 and I put pressure on them to lower Energy subsidises. Somebody needs to say something about the costs that the majority have to face for just living. Some people would say this government has not lived up to expectations of cutting living costs, which I think is unfair considering they have done a lot of good things, for example a £700 cut in income tax for 25 million people. But imagine what it would be like under Labour and Ed Miliband.

George Galloway Blames Israel For Syria Chemical Attack

In my opinion George Galloway is one of the most despicable men in Parliament. This is the man who attacks the free state of Israel for being an oppressive regime and backs brutal dictatorship in Syria and the government of Iran, a dictatorship in all but name. Its' no surprise that Galloway takes the side of Iran and Syria.

So what has his questionable morality led him to do now? Well of course he has attacked Israel for the chemical attack in Syria on Iranian state TV. To Mr Galloway, despite evidence pointing fully at Assad, Israel are to blame.

Murder on the HS2 Express

HS2 has yet again been in the news this week, and it's not very good for our good old friend Patrick McLoughlin, the Transport Secretary. Essentially it has been discovered HS2 is one of the most expensive things that the tax payer is going to have to bear this decade and this is all for an infrastructure project with no business case. What a waste.

  Patrick McLoughlin, the Transport Secretary, used to be a miner at a time where nationalised industries were the biggest white Elephants.

It all started just before the summer recess when the Government announced they were increasing the budget of HS2 from the £32 billion. This figure they said was definitely going to be the maximum cost of the project despite having gone up from £17 billion. However the Government have now said HS2 will cost £42.6 billion with an added contingency budget. It seems the Government realised it needed to put out more realistic figures because he Treasury, the Transport Select Committee and lots of other independent organisations saying that HS2 will cost massively over the proposed budget. 

But is HS2 going to cost just shy of £50 billion? Erm ... no. This week the Institute of Economic Affairs joined in on the scene and said that HS2 is now going to cost £80 billion, more than double the original costings. To back this figure even more it was reported in the FT that the Treasury actually believes High Speed Rail will cost £72 billion.

 Even Alistair Darling can't believe his eyebrows when he sees the full cost of HS2.

I believe it is bordering on madness to stick with an infrastructure project that would be so costly to the public purse. To put the figures of the project into perspective, our national deficit in 2010 was £167 billion. This means if we did not build HS2 we would cut our deficit nearly in half. No wonder even Labour figures are turning against High Speed Rail. These are the people who supported the project in government because they are prepared to use Keynesian infrastructure spending to provide unsustainable jobs which give the false pretence of an economic recovery. Alistair Darling, who was Transport Secretary at the time of HS1, has said HS2 "could easily run out of control" with highly contentious economic benefits and plenty of Labour and Conservative MPs are backing his words on this.

The Government's reasoning behind HS2 is that it will see a growth in trade using the railways and save time for businesses in the North. There is a debate using evidence from French and Japanese versions of HS2 as to whether quicker railways actually centralises growth in capital cities. There may be no growth in the North at all. What is for certain is that some growth will occur but is it really worth £42.6 billion let alone £80 billion?

The Government's plans have so many flaws that similes of HS2 have gone past the sieve stage and have now entered the more realistic metaphor of a hoop. For example the Transport Department accounts the time travelling on the train as lost business hours. Yet it is true from anybodies experience that people work on trains. This was much pointed out by the Public Accounts Committee but the Government have yet to listen. Back in the time when HS2 was supposed to cost £17 billion, the Tax Payers Alliance worked out that each of the 40,000 jobs the government said would be created by the scheme would cost £400,000 each. Yet if we took the national average of the amount of money it cost to create a job HS2 should be producing 170,000 jobs, the same as the working population of Coventry. 

This whole High Speed Rail nonsense should be stopped now. It is probably, considering the magnitude of its spending, the worst decision made by the Government. It is a clear murder of the representative of the value for money and common business sense. We're all victims and the government should be called to account so it doesn't get away with such criminal waste.