Author: |Posted: 10:03 am on 09/02/10
Category: Snowblog
So, China has overhauled Europe to become Iran’s major trading partner.
Last year official Iranian government figures showed EU trade at $35bn, and trade with China at $29bn. But according to the Financial Times today, those figures ignored the trade that enters Iran through the United Arab Emirates – some $15bn.
In the meantime China’s dependence upon Iranian energy represents 11 per cent of her total energy consumption. read more
Author: |Posted: 11:11 am on 08/02/10
Category: Snowblog
There is something squalid about watching MPs screeching over the immediate decision to prosecute some of their number.
My sources suggest more MPs, and more particularly more peers, will be charged in the coming days and weeks. It’s clear this morning that some MPs are trying to find a way of extracting party advantage from the hysteria. read more
Author: |Posted: 9:50 am on 05/02/10
Category: Snowblog
Jon Snow’s article first appeared in the Guardian newspaper.
The scandal of Britain’s libel laws and their facility for libel tourism is well known. So too is our traditionally cavalier attitude to freedom of speech.
But even against this background, the idea that a country with one of the worst records for press freedom and human rights was able to use the UK’s broadcast regulations to challenge legitimate reporting of allegations about cold-blooded killings in a brutal civil war surely takes the UK to a new place. read more
Author: |Posted: 11:24 am on 03/02/10
Category: Snowblog
Today it’s the turn of the Catholic church – don’t worry, Snowblog has not gone religious. Actually today’s is a more political than religious issue.
But as my Snowblog of two days ago triggered a reference to the Pope’s reported intervention into British politics, I feel bound to return to the matter.
I’m discussing the supposed spat involving the Pope and the Equality Bill being pushed through parliament by Harriet Harman.
Author: |Posted: 7:19 am on 03/02/10
Category: Snowblog
Despite my best efforts, the eleven minute dash on my bike from the studio after last night’s Channel 4 News to London’s Royal Festival Hall, only graced me with the echoes of the last chords of Beethoven’s 3rd Piano Concerto.
To have missed Daniel Barenboim’s exuberant performance so closely, felt like an act of sacrilege. read more
Author: |Posted: 12:08 pm on 01/02/10
Category: Snowblog
Imagine for a moment that the American Baptists from Idaho, who have been arrested heading out of Haiti with a busload of ‘orphans’, had been a group of Islamic fundamentalists. Would the world have been quite so sanguine about an incident that has been represented as involving naïve God botherers, or worse, child trafficking?
In truth there is a distorted use of language when it comes to religious fundamentalism. There is a spirit of Christian fundamentalism abroad, which is at least as numerous, if not considerably more so than its Islamic counterpart. Its heartland is in America – particularly in landlocked states like Idaho that have traditionally sported a wariness of the world beyond America’s shores. read more
Author: |Posted: 9:23 am on 26/01/10
Category: Snowblog
‘Tis the season of mellow fruitlessness – the season in the political orchard that sees last year’s rotten fruit still on the ground and slim evidence of any spring buds to come.
I cannot remember a general election less looked forward to, nor an array of contestants, across the board, that people feel less enthusiasm for. Even the prospect of unprecedented debate between the leaders feels like avoidable television.
Today’s publication of the British Social Attitudes survey reveals that only 56 per cent of the population think it is “everyone’s duty to vote” – down from 68 per cent in 1991. That is some fall.
It is a finding that my own anecdotal observations concur with. Indeed the finding that only 41 per cent of under 35s think they should is something of which I am even more strongly aware.
There is an apathy out there. There is a disconnect out there which represents a very serious challenge to what we understand as democracy. As politicians battle to blame each other for different aspects of the recession, our own Channel 4 News poll suggests that few are ready to credit their leaders for any of the green shoots you may detect in today’s GDP figures.
For years the population has put up with electoral change in which a party with a minority of the potential popular vote grabs absolute power and proceeds to wield it as if it enjoyed more or less absolute popular support.
Listening to the veteran Labour MP Austin Mitchell last night explaining how he mistakenly overcharged the tax payer by £10,000 for his mortgage made me wonder how it is that all these “mistakes” had left MPs of all parties better off.
The fact is that politics and politicians are enjoying the worst odour any of us have known in any of our lifetimes. Couple this with the dwindling of voting duty and a record low turn-out at the next election beckons.
Who would go into politics to stink of such scent? Who would willingly subject themselves to the bullying and bruising? Then there are Chilcott’s daily reminders of the bizarre decision-making process that led up to Iraq War, with little involvement of the Cabinet let alone parliament.
It’s a bleak landscape out there and the public sees few, if any, political heroes staggering about on it. The next election won’t just be a test of our leaders, it’s also going to be a test of faith in our system of governance.
Author: |Posted: 8:09 am on 25/01/10
Category: Snowblog
We drove out from Port-au-Prince and up to Haiti’s border with the Dominican Republic. Darkness was falling and the border shuts at night. We had to step on the gas a bit. But in our haste did not fail to note how little traffic there was on the road.
Indeed in the entire six hour run to Santa Domingo, we never saw a single “aid convoy”. I can’t explain this. I have asked the UN, I have asked the Americans and they say the aid flow is normal and active.
Author: |Posted: 9:21 pm on 21/01/10
Category: Snowblog
I am writing this sitting cross-legged on a sleeping mat at the bottom of the runway in Port-au-Prince.
That there is a runway is itself remarkable in that, from the first steps beyond the airfield, the earthquake destruction is everywhere.
And because there is a runway, nine days on, there is a credible relief effort here in Haiti.
Author: |Posted: 9:35 pm on 19/01/10
Category: Snowblog
They call it the bottleneck. The strangled connection (or is it disconnection?) between the world’s outpouring of support for Haiti, and the delivery of aid to the three million people on the ground here who need it.
On any previous disaster where generosity has failed to deliver, we have found people to blame. In Haiti, it is different. Technically, America is doing what America does: heavy lifting, boots on the ground, choppers in the air, heavy lift at the airport. Technically, many other countries have muscled in behind.
Haiti was already a UN administered entity – if not de jure, certainly de facto. And this was yet another of the world’s NGO-dominated economies.
