Feltham and Heston by-election - Dr Earth dances for UKIP

UKIP's Andrew Charalambous with Jade Jagger

Nigel Farage has got some front. There's no denying that! He says of his party's candidate in the forthcoming Feltham & Heston by-election that "Andrew is an excellent candidate. He fully grasps what matters to the people in this country and will fight tooth and nail for those in Feltham and Heston". Andrew being Andrew Charalambous, UKIP's Housing spokesman.

The UKIP website blurbs on about their candidate.

"Thirty-nine year-old Andrew is a property developer who has spent much of his career helping reduce homelessness in London through an innovative social housing scheme that allows poorer tenants to avoid paying rent and deposits.

Dubbed "a different kind of social entrepreneur" by the Financial Times, he is also founder of Club4Climate, a global environment organisation that launched the the world's first ecological nightclub. The bar, based in King's Cross, features a piezoelectric dance floor that produces electricity by harnessing the movements of people.

Andrew has also served 15 years as a special constable in the City of London and the Honourable Artillery Company. He is a patron of the Leukaemia Society and studied Law at London University before qualifying as a barrister.

In last year's General Election he stood as a Conservative Party candidate in Edmonton."

It was that last point that got me interested. Another defector from Cameron's party? Yes, but not as we know it! All the above makes Andrew sound greener than Caroline Lucas and more socially aware than Iain Duncan Smith. But the Daily Mail got there first. They said he was calling himself Dr.Earth and found this description of him on his website -

"He has completed one of the profoundest spiritual journeys in history. We know of no other living person who has travelled to so many countries on a spiritual quest and been taught by so many great spiritual masters from such a diverse plethora of spiritual systems. He is a tantric master initiated in India. He has dated some of the most beautiful women in the world. Andrew describes himself as the first male feminist. He says "women are definitely the superior sex. Society needs less playboys and more men with family values. I am nothing compared to my brothers who are decent family men with children."

Heady stuff! Andrew Charalambous was the Conservative candidate at Edmonton in the last general election. A Tory parliamentary member said, "It's nuts. It's one thing to stand by the "vote blue, go green" theory, but to say we can solve climate change by dance? The scary thing is he could win the seat. It's a car crash waiting to happen." He didn't win and there was no car crash.

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Why is Cameron so raptured with Coulson?

Rebekah and Andy - Making it up as they go along!

David Cameron can't be a very good judge of character. He's still saying that Andy Coulson never gave him a moment's doubt. Yet most of the country thinks Coulson is a slippery character unworthy to have been so close to the inner sanctums of Downing Street. I can't fathom why Cameron is so besotted with this spin doctor and disingenous tabloid hack. It's not as if he can't spin things himself. He does that quite ably.

Now we hear that Rebekah Brooks and Coulson knew all along about phone hacking. That it was routine. Both Wade and Coulson come across as people who have their morals set in a parallel universe. I'm glad that we have this Leveson Inquiry. No stone to be left unturned. When I was a child I used to like turning over stones in the garden. All sorts would creep out after years of doing things their way in private. These tabloid journalists are no different. Perhaps Lord Justice Leveson might swat a few as restorative justice of a kind?

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Herman Cain in ginger sting sex scandal

Ginger White attempts to ginger things up for Herman Cain

I feel sorry for Herman Cain. He puts himself forward as a candidate for US president and all manner of stuff comes floating out of the closet. Not skeletons exactly but a gingered up story by a businesswoman, allegedly in financial difficulties, who goes by the name of Ginger White. She says she had a 13-year affair with Mr. Cain. Really? He says not. Is she on the make or the take?

What I find odd is that all these innuendos and claims of sexual impropriety all came about AFTER Herman Cain shot up in the polls. When he appeared as simply a paper candidate nobody batted an eyelid. Certainly not Ginger White. Was she thinking it best to behave like a volcano warming up its lava? Get ready for Krakatoa, Ginger's about to explode. Maybe I'm being too sensitive in thinking conspiratorially. But it's still a bit odd.

Anyway, these tales of sexual goings-on are distracting from the main task before us. That the United States, Europe and other western countries are in dire straits economically. If the lurid elements of the press want to delve into every aspect of this then we are in for a bumpy ride. And will it end with Herman Cain? What if some woman, or even a man, gets the urge to "go public" implicating one of the other candidates? None of this can be proved anyway, not unless secret cameras or tape recorders were used.

We heard today at the Leveson Inquiry how bullying some newspaper businesses can be to journalists just so a juicy story can help to sell papers. No doubt Ginger White's sudden rise to fame is helping the
commercial media, but it is not edifying. Not in the slightest.

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Guido Fawkes to be quizzed about Paul Staines at Leveson Inquiry

So important he was bound to be phone hacked!

Lord Justice Leveson wants Paul Staines to appear before his inquiry regarding the tip-offs that appeared on the Order-Order blog regarding Alastair Campbell's forthcoming evidence. Now most of Britain regards Campbell as a character who skids around town plotting and planning, but are they really interested in his ideas about who tried to blag what from whom? How explosive his "evidence" will be remains to be seen but it's probably more of the same.

I took a look at Guido Fawkes and wondered a bit about kettles and pots. There's a campaign going on at the moment to "restore capital punishment" via an email petition. Paul Staines is behind it. He rather disingenuosly promotes the murder of Joanna Yeates as a reason to sign. Vincent Tabak is put forward as a suitable candidate for the gallows. It has a ring of sensationalism about it. Yet when I looked at the wording of the petition, only a very limited category of murder would be included in the petition. Murder of children and police officers when killed in the line of duty. This would not cover the case he so graphically flags up.

It's one thing to try to sensationalise Campbell's artful dodging but then the scribe wielding the pen should not be a mirror image of the subject of criticism. Maybe Paul Staines will make for a more interesting witness than Campbell, obfuscator to the stars!

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Fat dogs and Englishmen go out for a take-out

One fat dog with human traits and trends

Last night we had fish and chips. It's a great meal, quite nutritional if cooked well. However, we only have it about once a month. We cook our own pizzas, and make our own chicken nuggets for the children. I've got a slow cooker, and we have cooked vegetables and we have salads (not just lettuce leaves!). I go regularly and suffer not from constipation or diarrhea. I'm not paragon of vitamin virtue but neither am I a glutton for culinary punishment. So I can't understand gartantuans and their problems.

Jamie Oliver is quite right to berate Michael Gove over food in schools. Because successive ministers have skirted round this. We have crap food in British institutions! Even in my uncle's London club the food was worse than school. If anyone complained the answer was "they like it like they remembered at school!".

My stay in hospitals, infrequent as they are, have been marred by the frightful food and the nonchalent attitude of the staff. The medical procedures I can't fault, but knives and stitches don't provide sustinence. FOOD DOES!

We are only fools to ourselves. Fools for letting government ministers feed us crap, both political and physical. What is wrong with cooking good, decent healthy food? Is in beyond the ken of these hospital administrators?

Unhealthy food is creeping back into schools. Doesn't surprise me. If people are weaned onto the wrong food, then given the wrong ideas about food generally, then we have an ignorant mass of people. Do they want to be so dim? I like confectionary, crisps, chips, etc. It's all tempting stuff. But I don't eat the stuff three or four times a day. Variety is the spice of life and is certainly the spice of food. All the programmes I've seen on fat people being given tasty food that doesn't blow them up further shows that they never ever thought of eating such stuff. Education is the way. If people don't know, let those who do show the way.

Nearly one quarter of British women are fat. Or obese, in the clinically correct jargon. The UK has more obese women than any other country in Europe, according to data agency Eurostat. It looked at 19 countries, found 23.9% of British women were recorded as being obese in the year 2008 to 2009. And no doubt many of those are smoking too!

Jamie Oliver may feel he's whistling in the wind sometimes, but I think his motives are right. Good healthy food never killed anyone. It's the over indulgence that is the killer.

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Sainsbury's boss Justin King says top pay out of control

All the fun of the unfair!

Britain is running two economies it seems to me. The good well-structured, well-managed one and the one run by dirty rotten scoundrels. Justin King is the chief executive of Sainsbury's. He came into the business when it was in a tail spin and turned it around and has made a success of it. He gets a salary of £900,000 for being in charge of the company. Considering he has the responsibilities he has, I don't think this outlandish in the commercial world. He said on BBC Question Time last night that pay is out of control in some organisations because there is no transparent link between pay and performance. He went on to say that those running companies need to start listening to those who see 'something rotten' about the pay for those at the top.

Something rotten? The good economy cannot continue to be the last chance saloon for the bad economy. These saloons all have the same name. "Bailout Bonanza!". Utterly hopeless to continue as such. I applaud Justin King for standing up and saying such things. These bosses carrying away cash bonuses for mediocre performance are sheer hypocrites. They'd sack their staff if such antics occurred in the lower levels of the business. How come they are immune?

Shareholders need to get a grip and get these laggard leaders into line. If they won't, then Vince Cable needs to legislate so that remuneration committees are seen as above board and not cosy cabals of self-serving bonus grabbers all filling their pots as if in a sushi restaurant.

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Nancy Pelosi caught out by 60 Minutes in Visa stock trade

Nancy Pelosi visually verifies her Visa activities

You have to hand it to some senators and representatives. Today is Thanksgiving Day, but they probably aren't giving thanks for a fruitful harvest in the fields. No, they are thanking those voters who voted for them not realising that they are only going to Washington so that they can became multi-millionaires. Forget the little people. It's the pork barrel politics that count.

I thought the leaders of the European Union were a pretty despicable bunch of self-serving anti-democratic personal enrichers. But the United States has its fair share of dishonourable political representatives. Steve Kroft is a very good investigative journalist, especially on CBS 60 Minutes. Just recently he reported on the share dealings of such worthies as Nancy Pelosi. In fact, he confronted her and asked her about her purchase of Visa stock and its subsequent monetary advantage to her. She appeared suddenly to have become a demonic cross between a fish out of water and a rabbit caught in the headlights of a car. All she could bleat was that she knew nothing but was a feared opponent of the credit card industry. It makes testimonial viewing. In it for what they can get out of it. Shame on you Nancy!

I thought we had enough pocket lining going on, but some American politicians seem to be doing it on a grand scale. I really do think that the American electorate gets a raw deal. It's a country where free speech is very much allowed, but its democratic institutions are very much geared to keeping the people at bay.

I really hope that on this Thanksgiving Day Americans can start to look forward to the day when corruption and cynicism are a thing of the past in their politics.

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Herman van Rompuy - villain in an Agatha Christie novel

Nigel Farage has had another go at Herman van Rompuy, the unelected "head of the European State", for acting in undemocratic and high-handed ways. The UKIP leader says Europe's crisis is "like an Agatha Christie novel", trying to guess who'll be bumped off next. "The difference is we know who the villains are." This video shows how even a nonchalent paper shuffling exercise seemingly outwits van Rompuy and Barosso. The others just smirk. Is this the pinnacle of European democracy? No referendums, deposed prime ministers and sloth-like actions to save a single currency singularly failing in all respects!

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US congressmen in insider trading row

John Boehner and Nancy Pelosi in share dealing controversy

Politicians from all around the world, whether in so-called sophisticated democracies or hell-hole dictatorships, are feathering their own nests. And some of these nests are in the US Congress, complete with feathers and fur. What have they been up to? Well, getting to sell shares the minute they are given secret briefings about the dire state of the nation. Treasury officials come in and tell them something, they pop their eyeballs and then go hot-foot to their brokers. Little titbits tell them that their own stock may be about to go south any minute. But these legislating insider traders have written the laws so that they don't apply to them. OK for Lehman Brothers to get to face the music, but these politicians carry on as they may. And why is that? They think they don't get paid enough!

Author Peter Schweizer, who has written a book Throw Them All Out, tells Today business presenter Simon Jack that US politicians have taken part in short selling as well as aggressively trading following these secret government briefings. He names House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio), Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-California), House Financial Services Committee Chairman Spencer Bachus (R-Alabama), former Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-Illinois) and ex-Sen. Judd Gregg (R-New Hampshire) as among those attacked for their participation in alleged insider trading and “soft corruption” as he puts it.

If all this is true then the American people know what to do, I would hope. Vote out these insider dealers and soft corrupters and get yourselves some decent folk who don't want or need to feather their own nests in such a sneaky way.

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Alan Johnson's former police bodyguard sacked

Caught in the act! More from comics galore

A police bodyguard to former Home Secretary Alan Johnson has been sacked after an inquiry into an alleged affair with the Labour MP's wife. PC Paul Rice, 45, was dismissed by the Metropolitan Police, which condemned him for damaging its reputation. Now I'm wondering if I'm alone in thinking this is a bit rich. The "damaging its reputation" bit. After all, the Met have been pretty good at aiming potshots at its reputation, sometimes with deadly accuracy.

They've been forced through hedges backwards to get them to reveal information they consider damaging. Then they act like hermetically sealed lids. We've seen them come out of the News International fiasco with mud stuck as one example. Then there was the G20 protests with the death of passerby Ian Tomlinson. Not to mention the shinanigans regarding the death of Brazilian Jean Charles de Menezes. So now we have a policeman falling short. Not over beating someone up or stealing or the like. He suffered only from a human failing that many have suffered from. He coveted another man's wife. Not only that, he did something about it by having an affair - allegedly. MPs have been known to cavort with women who are not their wives. I imagine there are a few policeman that do similar things.

Would PC Rice have been sacked if he had committed adultery with another policeman's wife? I do not know, but I'm wondering if it was the fact that Alan Johnson was the cuckold in this case. The police these days have seemingly odd ideas about things. They are quite happy to be involved with gay parades, yet pour scorn on heterosexual impropriety. It is as if a new morality is being policed by the police.

That PC Rice did wrong is clear. But should he be thrown out of his job because he apparently damaged the Met's reputation? Seems a bit harsh. And the affair is still only alleged. Justice of a kind, I suppose.

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Astraeus Airlines ceases operations and flies no more

Astraeus Airlines - grounded and operations ceased

In the world of Wikipedia "was" is a word you don't want to see if you are in business or doing anything generally. Quick as a flash, if you stop doing anything you are a "was" as opposed to an "is". Wikipedia proudly announces that "Astraeus, trading as Astraeus Airlines, was a British airline based at Astraeus House in Crawley, West Sussex, England". It only happened yesterday, but history is always in the making on Wikipedia.

Now Astraeus Airlines had something about it. It was an airline famous, or sort of so, for having the lead singer of rock band Iron Maiden, Bruce Dickinson, as an Astraeus pilot and as marketing director. One wonders if small airlines can survive in this market of today, even with famous faces fronting them. Sir Stelios Haji-Ioannou has said he is setting up a new airline called Fastjet. This is partly because he is miffed about the current goings-on at Easyjet, over which he has no longer much control - only influence.

Will Fastjet take to the skies? Who knows? All I know is that with airlines collapsing or merging, competition will be thin on the ground and even thinner in the air. Positive competition is good for consumers. There's choice and the companies get to do things better hopefully. So if Stelios gets Fastjet flying, that's good news.

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Banks, bonuses and "corrosive" executive pay

John Varley relaxing between pay increases

The banks are back in the headlines. Not that they've been out much. A bit like the old Top Twenty with Alan "Fluff" Freeman. "....and still at No.1, it's John Varley and the Barclay's Bank Band with their version of Jackie Wilson's Higher and Higher......"

The High Pay Commission has been looking into the touchy subject of executive pay. The commission was set up with charity funding to investigate boardroom pay. Its year-long inquiry found that the pay of top executives at a number of FTSE companies had risen by more than 4,000% on average in the last 30 years. That leaves the minions way down the pecking order. Now one of the top executives selected for the publicity effect was John Varley, erstwhile chief bottlewasher at Barclays Bank. Mr Varley was offered and readily accepted a pay packet stuffed with a cool £4,365,636! Now admittedly he didn't run home with all that. The taxman took 60% of it for sloshing around the general economy. However, it's the thought that he sees his value to Barclays as 169 times more effective as the lowest paid worker.

I'd have thought, now that banks don't have bank managers anymore, just managers of financial shops, that pay should be based on how well the company has been run and not on an expectation that executive pay rises higher and higher each year REGARDLESS of company fortunes.

These remuneration committees should be transparent, above board and totally reflective of the company structure. They should include at least one representative for each of these groups - shareholders, staff, and customers. Yes, customers! Public companies are just that. Publicly quoted with public responsibilities. Far too many are run for the convenience of the bosses who have got there, yes, by merit, but mostly by design.

BSkyB is said to be trying to fight off "a shareholder revolt", so have installed a French executive banker and Martin Gilbert, the boss of Aberdeen Asset Management, to do their bidding. Are shareholders no longer seen as having the right to a say in THEIR company? Aberdeen Asset Management claims on its website to have impeccable corporate social responsibility. "At Aberdeen we strive to do our best for the environment and society as well as our clients, employees and shareholders. Corporate social responsibility (CSR) is a fundamental part of our business ethos at Aberdeen. It forms part of our business strategy, as well as playing a key role in how we operate and manage money around the world." All very well, but is propping up James Murdoch and his seedy doings all part of it?

As I've said on this blog before, I am all in favour of handsome rewards for success. But not largesse for just being there. I had hoped Vince Cable would go through these FTSE firms with a liberal dose of salts, flushing out the corrupt practices and flagrant abuses of shareholders' rights and opinions.

I'm still waiting and hoping.

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Mitt Romney facing both ways on Italian debt crisis

Cain and Abel? Herman may be Cain, but Mitt isn't totally able!

The GOP debates are a real spectacle this time round. Two from last time, Ron Paul (my choice) and Mitt Romney, have so far not done anything to cause them to fall from political grace. Two others, Rick Perry and Herman Cain, are wobbling along like a three-wheeled  wagon. Both are a joy to journalists and a real worry to Republican mandarins. Then the other four, Michele Bachmann, Jon Huntsman, Rick Santorum and Newt Gingrich flit from flaky remarks to pithy comments.

Now it's said that Mitt Romney is still the favourite to win the nomination. One has to wonder what his credibility is based on. He may be rich and famous, but has he got all his marbles in place? He tends towards gobbledegook rather than reasoned argument. Now Ron Paul has loads of reasoned argument and is very low on gobbledegook.

Here's what Mitt Romney said at the CNBC Debate, with Maria Bartiromo, about the Italian/EU debt crisis -

ROMNEY: Well, Europe is able to take care of their own problems. We don't want to step in and try and bail out their banks and bail out their governments. They have the capacity to deal with that themselves. They're a very large economy. And there will be, I'm sure, cries if Italy does default, if Italy does get in trouble. And we don't know that'll happen, but if they get to a point where they're in crisis and banks throughout Europe that hold a lot of Italy debt will -- will then face crisis and there will have to be some kind of effort to try and uphold their financial system. There will be some who say here that banks in the U.S. that have Italian debt, that we ought to help those, as well. My view is no, no, no. We do not need to step in to bail out banks either in Europe or banks here in the U.S. that may have Italian debt. The right answer is for us...
(APPLAUSE)

BARTIROMO: But -- but the U.S. does contribute to the International Monetary Fund, and the IMF has given $150 billion to the eurozone. Are you saying the U.S. should stop contributing to the IMF?

ROMNEY: I'm happy to continue to participate in world efforts like the World Bank and the IMF, but I'm not happy to have the United States government put in place a TARP-like program to try and save U.S. banks that have Italian debt, foreign banks doing business in the U.S. that have Italian debt, or European debt. We're just -- banks there. There's going to be an effort to try and draw us in and talk about how we need to help -- help Italy and help Europe. Europe is able to help Europe. We have to focus on getting our own economy in order and making sure we never reach the kind of problem Italy is having. If we stay on the course we're on, with the level of borrowing this administration is carrying out, if we don't get serious about cutting and capping our spending and balancing our -- our budget, you're going to find America in the same position Italy is in four or five years from now, and that is unacceptable. We've got to fix our -- our deficit.

So best will in the world, I don't get what he is really saying. On one hand he says "Don't bail out banks, leave them to go bust" and on the other he says "There will have to be some kind of effort to try and uphold their financial system", which of course means money going in. So it's either no money or lots of money. He doesn't want direct intervention (TARP-like program) but he does want indirect intervention through the IMF and World Bank ("happy to").

Shouldn't Americans be asking more questions about Mr Flip-Flop Romney?


Read more: http://thepage.time.com/2011/11/10/cnbc-transcript-of-your-money-your-vote-republican-presidential-debate/#ixzz1dK6c7ah7

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Rick Perry fumbles as he mumbles in GOP debate

Rick Perry teases out a thought as Ron Paul looks on

Rick Perry got into a mix-up with his lines in the GOP debate. He sort of laughed it off. Then afterwards thought the whole idea of debates not really for him. So guess what? People are wondering if he's going to throw in the towel. He isn't, but he's not helping himself.

I don't think Perry is up to being president. Not because he fluffed what he wanted to say, but because he made a big deal out of it. We've all made an error or two when speaking in public, for those of us who have done it. But the art is being able to think on your feet. Perry seemed to think that his mistake was not looking good on TV. Ridiculous. It was his inability to correct his error in any coherent way. Now he's the subject of ridicule rather than admiration. Pity for him.

Here's a good example of Rick Perry stumbling over his thoughts. He's not expected to know everything but surely this is not good -

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Is Theresa May an honourable lady?

"I won't resign!", says Theresa May - she may though

Theresa May is the Home Secretary. That basically means she is the cabinet member responsible for seeing that homeland security works efficiently and effectively. With budget cuts looming all around her like circling vultures, she and her civil servants (plus those at arms length in "agencies") came up with a wheeze to save money. Some ordinary looking foreigners could be waved in, "Welcome to Britain" style, whilst those more dodgy looking foreigners could be properly screened. As with a lot of the whims and fancies of executive government, the plan went pear-shaped and it all began to work far less effectively and certainly not efficiently. The opposition (not all on the Labour benches!) got wind of it. Mrs May sat still and said it was all the fault of her chief minion Brodie Clark, head of the UK Border Agency. He was suspended. Mrs May got the backing of David Cameron, she then muttered on about how sensitive immigration was for the public at large, and thought she'd carry on as normal. The opposition clamoured a bit more, Brodie resigned in a huff saying "it was all her idea!", and the foreigners get to have a field day, in laughs at our expenses, at least.

Mr. Brodie says, in his statement regarding his resignation, "The home secretary implies that I relaxed the controls in favour of queue management. I did not. Despite pressure to reduce queues, including from ministers, I can never be accused of compromising security for convenience." He intends suing the government for constructive dismissal.

What I find hard to understand is that Mrs. May does not know which ports of entry are subject to these "relaxed" controls and how many there are. Surely she has meetings where she is briefed? I get the distinct impression that this is the same old Humpty Dumpty defence. Is she saying that because she did not actually confirm in writing that, say, ten airports could be used for experimental relaxing of the controls, that she did not discuss it? I think it smacks of disingenuous dialogue.

Maybe her political antennae have been given the same treatment as analogue TV signals. She needs to get digital. Immigration is a touchy subject. A politician with crossed wires is going haywire in a handcart. We need the truth. Whatever happened to transparency Mrs. May?

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Sarkozy calls Netanyahu a liar

Benjamin Netanyahu spots two gossips

A dog fight is about to break out in diplomatic circles. A very undiplomatic thing has been said by Nicolas Sarkozy, the miniature poodle of European politics, about Benjamin Netanyahu, the wire-haired terrier of Middle Eastern politics. Sarkozy has barked injudiciously to Barack Obama about his relationship with the Israeli prime minister.

"I can't see him anymore, he's a liar," Mr Sarkozy said in French. "You may be sick of him, but me, I have to deal with him every day," Mr Obama replied. Every day? What on earth do they talk about. It can't be to ask if Netanyahu is going to budge on peace talks because that is like trying to shift a beached a whale. Maybe they discuss the weather?

One way to stop dealing with him like this is to cut off his cash dollars. Tell him he isn't going to get a dime more until he agrees to see sense about serious and meaningful negotiations about a lasting peace settlement. But that isn't likely to happen. Probably Netanyahu will get in a bate, say how persecuted his people are, and how the world doesn't understand him.

Politics in the Middle Eat is like a game of snakes and ladders. Throw the dice, move four paces forward, up the ladder, get an extra move, another six paces, then down the snake, back to where you started your turn!

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Birmingham Airport jobs as Monarch fleet expands

Monarch Airlines offer five new routes from BHX

Well, just as George Papandreou heads for the Hellenic highway on his own, Birmingham Airport announces a new route to Heraklion in Crete. Brummies get your old drachmas ready!

This is good news from Monarch Airlines for Birmingham Airport. Not only are they keeping up the holiday links with Greece but they have opened up a new route to Rome, a destination long overdue for direct flights. Added to that the airline is offering new routes to Milan and Venice in Italy, and Dubrovnik in Croatia.

Whilst Monarch is seen mainly as a holiday airline this is also good for business passengers. Competition is good for business and it should be in the airport and airline sector. Those living in the metro Birmingham area and in the West Midlands generally want a local airport that offers an array of routes. The airport has done its bit, Midlanders must do theirs by flying from Birmingham!

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Our way on a referendum or the Hellenic highway out!

"There's your answer, George!", says Evangelos

Not content with berating George Papandreou on his chancy referendum, the dynamic duo, Angela Merkel and Nicolas Sarkozy, now say he can only have one line in the proposed referendum. That is "Does Greece stay in the Eurozone or leave it?". Nothing about bailouts or bossy foreign leaders. Of course, the Greeks do have a lot to blame for this themselves. Never very good at balancing the books, they profess loyalty to the idea of being in the Eurozone but have little understanding of how to spend or save euros judiciously. And now the referendum hangs in the balance as the Greek parliament decides on whether to give Papandreou a vote of confidence. Finance minister Evangelos Venizelos has given George Papandreou's plans for a referendum on the euro a resounding "NO". Maybe he has plans?

But Greece's present difficulty isn't my beef with this horrendous mess we are in. No, I can't stand the lack of democratic process. The EU is an edifice built up on the whims and fancies of political leaders rather than the hopes and desires of the people. When the people do get a say, they are expected to say "YES" to the political masters and mistresses in everything they do.

So I have no issue with the Greek people having their say. The European Union is not a "common market" anymore. The playing field is not level. Mrs Merkel and President Sarkozy have assumed some form of leadership over us all. Who gave them such power and prestige? Probably Rumpuy Pumpuy in a rubber stamping operation! We do not have a common market as far as retailing is concerned. For example, a lot of French merchandise is far cheaper in France than in Britain. How come French mustard is three times more expensive in British supermarkets than in French ones. I hear Carrefour may be coming back via Ocado's website. Any chance we can be less cheesed off with the prices?

This is no digression on my part. It is symptomatic of the whole problem. There is political union without a proper political mandate. There is legal union, but virtually no European has properly agreed to this except the elite in Brussels. There is supposed to be economic union and free movement of labour, yet some countries are more equal than others. If anyone complains, we are told it's all an evolutionary process. Monkeys did better with that!

And on top of all this there is a single currency WITHOUT a single fiscal policy. Doomed to failure from day one. Mismanagement, poor judgement, bad leadership and a total disregard for democracy.

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Frau Merkel and her dislike of democracy

A euro for their thoughts?

Angela Merkel only sees value in democracy when it suits her. She and the French president are keen on saving the euro as if they are two hapless bank managers desperate to stop customers running to their unstable bank to take out their money. Mrs Merkel says that the Greeks should agree to her terms. How does she know that? She doesn't, of course. She's only got George Papandreou's shaky word for it. He had a vision on the flight home which told him he should hold a referendum. So he announced one. Instead of praising him for his democratic move, he gets lambasted for his efforts.

THE GREEKS WILL HAVE NO SAY!

screams Mrs Merkel, chirpily supported by sidekick Sarkozy. They have decreed also that -

THE GERMANS WILL HAVE NO SAY!

even though most Germans are muttering and murmuring on an increasingly voluminous basis about this lack of civic consultation. Germans are going to mortgage their country to save the Euro and it's like it and lump it for them.

Meanwhile, back in the Elysee Palace, the French president is doing all he can to ensure that -

THE FRENCH WILL HAVE NO SAY!

and, despite a worsening economic outlook for the French, Sarkozy is in his "let them eat euros" fantasy.

Democracy is not at the heart of Europe. It isn't even in the mind or soul of the continent. Referendums are just a niggling problem that our politicians are desperate to do away with. David Cameron promised a referendum, then three-line whipped his MPs rather like a school prefect (with help from his Bunteresque chief whip) so that they might forget they ever heard the word referendum mentioned. European politics is currently a bit like a school playground where bullying is rife, the sneaks are privy to everything and each class in the school is told to knuckle down.

Democracy is in a muddle!

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UK growth up 0.5%

It's not much to crow about. These figures are fairly meaningless to the vast majority of the British public as they battle against rising prices and pegged wages. Being squeezed financially offers no whoopee expressions of delight at this news. Coupled with the shenanigans of the European political elite (the Greek prime minister has gone barking!) and it is very hard to raise a smile.

But as Ronnie Barker's character Fletcher might say in Porridge "Don't let the buggers grind you down!".

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