Iraq- It's over by Christmas,- Now for the Audit.

The sight of the last convoy of US troops crossing the Iraqi border into Kuwait and the safety of the US army camp's McDonalds there was greeted with applause by nearly all Americans at home and a fair proportion of Iraqis in what they see as their now liberated home. No public doubts in America though there are likely to be in the Pentagon and other thinking parts of the political machine but a few more in Iraq, particularly amongst the now potentially disadvantaged minority Sunnis.

Nobody has yet dared to attempt a full audit of the war, what Iraq was like before the invasion, what it is like now and what went on and at what cost in lives and money in between. America needs a favourable verdict for domestic consumption especially amongst the relatives of the 4,500 dead military and the much larger number of maimed and irreparably wounded ones. Getting that verdict is going to be extremely difficult especially when the much larger numbers of Iraqis in both catageories is added to the account. Then there is the ruined infrastructure of what was a viable, functioning state , the wrecked hospitals and schools, the lost years of education ..and... and... The bill mounts with each thought and scan of the mental radar. Could it all really have been worth it to topple one man and his cronies when surely cheaper and more clinical remedies were at hand thanks to the state of modern very high tech electronics, drones, smart bombs and the like? Saddam Hussein and the Baath Party were dreadful people and organisations but they posed little or no external threat. Iraq was a secular state, a buffer against Iran's ever present Gulf intentions and had a largely pro western history . Anti Israeli sabre rattling was largely orchestrated and cosmetic and it was doubtful if the country would go to war over it despite macho talk about that bogeyman the weapons of mass destruction. Saddam certainly had no truck with the Al Quaeda franchise, nothing at all to do with 9/11 and made sure that any signs of extremist trouble from out of line clerics were swiftly dealt with.

Now it's all over the academics and historians will come out of hiding and start to really examine the nuts and bolts of it all, hold the entrails up to the light and , along with the accountants and statisticians have a field day. The military and social analysts will be in there too. The origins, objectives, strategy, organisation and conduct of the war and its hideously expensive aftermath will receive the full glare of objectivecase studies at universities, military academies and political interest groups all over the world. Thumbs up or down? The betting has to be largely the latter as the bill in all respects just looks too big for the objective,- or stretching a point,-objectives.

Meanwhile what do the American troops and politicians take home with them and what do they leave behind as their personal legacies? Perhaps the fact that almost to a man or woman , after 9 years they still call the country I-rak says much of it. "We went there to make them do it our way. They can call themselves what they like but to us it's I-rak. They can like it or lump it." They didn't get much new cultural awareness or understanding of the realities and shape of the world for all that expenditure and nor did they successfully sell "The American way" to their hosts. In you go auditors of war. Let's see what's in the accounts and what it all adds up to. A mammoth headache could be coming down the track.

Brussells - Cameron presses the button. A new future sprouts.

Clearly David Cameron read Twigaview and went off to the all nighter in Brussells which followed the EU leaders non austerity dinner (banquet in normal parlance ) with a clear head and new vigour.

The hand wringing and whining to the tune of "we are marginalised" by the likes of Labour and the twittering David Owen this morning tell us that the prime Minister has done the right thing. Only on Wednesday were Labour warning against weakness in the face of Euro adversity and here they are out to play again dancing to their inevitable flipside tune.

To many commentators, the UK's stance this morning has been all about simply protecting the financial services industry. That is not true and misses the point entirely.

Ever since the EU was established there has been a barely hidden Franco/German agenda of eventually politically uniting Europe under in effect their dominant leadership. Part of France's motivation, but not Germany's, has been the marginalisation of the politically disliked Britain. For most British the idea of an overarching European superstate reducing national parliaments to the equivalent of county councils has never been acceptable and is unlikely to be for a very long time. All parties have known this and as result the federal powers of the EU have only been introduced very slowly. Stealth has been key and the federalists have always been careful to ensure that has never been quite an important enough issue or proposed single power grab to justify throwing toys out of the pram at any particular moment.

France in particular seen the Euro crisis as a magnificent opportunity to significantly push the extension of EU powers forward. It is the potentially the biggest grab yet,- all in everyone's best interests of course to save the Euro. The UK has had the courage to say "Hey, - Not so fast" and said simply "No,- this isn't where we want to go". It's not that the Merko combine didn't know that. They just didn't believe he would finally stand firm amidst all their moralising about the collective good, this not being the time for discord etc. and declare his answer loudly. They would know that he was faced with all sorts of Foreign Office and other chaff about "loss of influence" and how dreadful that would be, the British Eurocrats wouldn't be invited to the cosiest lunches and dinners in Brussells and calculated that he would buckle. Sarkosy though probably wasn't fussed either way.

Sometimes it is necessary to cause a crisis so as to get a resolution. Cameron, alone amongst his peers has had the vision to see beyond the Euro crisis and the dangers of quick fix substantially changing the nature of the EU. In doing so he has moved a long way from being where we saw him yesterday as not giving the leadership needed to break through from a suffocating one sized fits all solution into the reality that a two tier or two type Europe is the best answer. Those twin but libnked organisations of the 1950s -"The Six" (EU) and "The Seven " (EFTA) look very much the solution for the 2010s. Far from being marginalised as the pundits will howl today, Britain could emerge much stronger as the leader of the more liberal free trade only group. The remainder could continue towards the superstate, though at a high risk of it failing much more disastrously not long hence. The EU core could not afford to put up trade barriers against the others as they need the reciprocal to in particular the UK's very open markets.

The British Prime Minister should therefore return home deserving a pleasant weekend. It's likely that his deluxe festive gift hampers from Europe are at this moment be being downgraded to boxes of crackers. If so he would do well to have them checked out before pulling.

Footnote: On reaching home Mr Cameron may well find Lib Dems on his doorstep. They are much more in favour of Peace in our Time solutions and love and brother/sisterhood in Europe . This could be a coalition problem. More of that later. Let's watch the falling dust first.

A Simple Guide to EU and Euro Pains and Strains- and a simple solution.

There is a lot of rushing about and huffing and puffing going on around the EU, the Eurozone, the Euro and where the UK stands. The is also much shouting and breast beating about "The Euro mustn't be allowed to fail","The UK will lose influence if it stays out of the melee/doesn't at some time join the Euro/Eurozone/sign up to this and that". For the UK itself there is the sight of Leader Dave, one moment resolute that some powers ,particularly those over City regulation and employment law, must remain totally in UK hands and promising that he will stand firm on these demands. The next moment he is off again to see Merkozy and saying that the return of powers isn't that important and he must do what it takes to stay at the table,- even if maybe well below the salt. Today's performance in the Commons was robust as it had to be amongst the baying hounds of Prime Ministers' Question Time on all sides. How though will he handle tomorrow's EU summit and the ever mounting list of controls being floated out from the Merkozy camp?

It's all very confusing and often irritating. One can not guarantee always being able to avoid throwing a shoe through the TV screen.

So, just to untangle the apparent complexity and make it all simple, what's really going on, who is up to what, can the Euro or even the EU, stay in business and would it really be a disaster for the UK or anyone else if it didn't or both changed their form? Some of it is a bit murky but let's have a go and see if we can sleep any easier. To do that we will have to go back a bit,- right to the 1950s in fact.

With everyone exhausted and well nigh bancrupt after World War 2, maybe the last of the old legacy wars originally fought on horseback with legions of supporting "poor bloody infantry" but just moved along a bit with smarter land kit, new aircraft and less leaky ships, it was time to take stock. It was quite clear that a succession of massive slaughterfests had historically achieved nothing and everyone would have been more prosperous without them. That's even without considering the effect of the decimation of the best of two generations of young men. In 1939 there had evetually been little option but for "the Allies" to go to war with Germany to prevent a rolling genocide by a rogue regime (as opposed to the German people per se) but the cost in lives and money was appalling and everyone other than maybe Stalin recognised that this sort of conflict had to be avoided ever again.

The result was a rise of interest in some kind of unity in Europe on the basis more or less of the Chinese philosophy of constraining potential enemies by "embracing the bear", the basis of many alliances in business, politics and other human interactions. You don't like the school bully? Neutralise him either by force (tried and proven too dangerous) or by smothering him with mateyness. It had to be the latter.

There was some disagreement about what degree of embrace was necessary to do the trick. France and Germany favoured political union from the start although they recognised that the process would have to be gradual, reasonably well disguised, and never put starkly to their citizens who would be scared stiff of the idea. This group became the founders of the EEC, later the EU and were known as "The Six". It would have been seven but France's General de Gaulle, no lover of the British despite their leadership of the efforts to give him back what he saw as his country in 1944, made sure that they didn't get in. The other European grouping, which now included Britain and was a much more natural home for it was The European Free Trade Area, EFTA. They became "The Seven" and favoured a looser, less smothering form of cooperation,- simply a free trade area.

Over time, 3 of the 7 ,including Britain, have moved across to become EU members, leaving just 4 small states as the remnants of EFTA which lives on as, funnily enough a sort of tier 2 EU. There is a great opportunity for this to enlarge again as this concept of a 2speed EU becomes more and more likely in the form of the 17 Eurozone countries remaining in a deadening, inflexible embrace and the other 10 gravitating to a much less rigid and free wheeling free trade area. This would be ideal so long as the centralisers of the 17 didn't pull up the trade drawbridge. They would be very unwise to do so as Britain in particular with its genuinely very open markets is a big buyer of their industrial products. Cutting off noses to spite faces not impossible though when there is an underlying desire to punish Britain for its non conformist behaviour. Given the right links between the 17 and the 10, business would flow across the 27 borders but centralist political and fiscal control would not. That would remain the preserve of the 17 who seem to like that sort of thing. Cameron's best move now would be to come out openly and declare that the UK can not live within the straitjacket of a European superstate and lead the split in a constructive way. The more states he could take with him the better. The bigger "New EFTA" is the less the core EU can do without its business so the stronger would be the free trading bridge.

The main reason for the fractured EU and worse, the Euro problems, is that the two concepts of a United States of Europe and the single Euro currency are fundamentally flawed. Europe is not the USA. Each country has a long history and deep culture of its own. Most have been at war with, invaded by or occupied at least temporarily by all sorts of combinations of each other. The early settlers in America were different. They had the unifying feature that they were fleeing the suffocation of Europe with oppression, persecution of just lack of opportunities at home and wanted a completely fresh start. Even then it wasn't all plain sailing and the collision between two rival groupings had to be broadly resolved by the Civil War. Subsequently the federal structure of the USA has preserved some independence for each state and not all love each other too much. The overall single nation relationship has through been close enough to demand a strong common federal currency and the US dollar has been extremely successful.

The European Union is nothing like the USA. It is not a natural single political entity to which all its citizens have at one time escaped and therefore willingly signed up . As result it is even less a natural single currency union. The laws of dynamics mean that efforts to tighten it produce more strains and stresses than strengths. Any structural engineer will tell you what naturally and unavoidably happens to such edifices. There is a period when they can be kept up by strengthening, adding a bit here and a bit there but each of these adds weight and diminishes the efficiencies of the whole and generally just transfers the potential break point to somewhere else. The reinforcement patches also mean ever increasing costs and higher and higher maintainence, so that more and more good money is poured after bad. People say things like "It must be kept up at all costs" rather than "Let's design a new one to replace it and once in place we will let the original fall down or be blown up".

It is the "It must be kept up" line about both the EU and the Euro that is being shouted by not only the Merkosy core but also by the UK's David Cameron. Cameron is missing the biggest and most revolutionary trick of all. He should be trying to keep it all simple and easily understood by all and saying "It's not working so let's replace it with version 2.0 and start again recognising historic, current and future realities." The clarity of a return to a separate high cost beaurocracy driven EU and a lower cost, more free wheeling EFTA would be ideal and give the component nations the oppirtunity to decide which model they really want rather than being swept along with the creaking one size fits all EU superstate and all its attendant costs and limits on individual sovereignties. The UK should go for that without further ado and ignore Foreign Office hand and other parts wringing about "loss of influence in Europe". Leadership of the EFTA group would give the country a much more significant role in European politics than its alternative sidelining within an unreconstituted EU.

Any odds on Mr Cameron going that? Not good we suspect. As a manager rather than a leader, he isn't strong on vision and isn't driven by a passionate political philosophy. He is more inclined to back away from the conflict and settle for a wordy fudge in Brussells today. If he does though he should beware the assorted rotteweiler pack awaiting him back home. Hello Boris,the Eds and the rest.

Reaction to Clarkson's Comments,- Get a Grip everyone.

Jeremy Clarkson's comments on BBC's "The One Show" last night that he would take the day's public servants pension strikers outside and shoot them in front of their families drew 4,700 protests to the broadcaster and has sent the unions, ever up for expressing "anger" or other indignation, scurrying for legal advice.

Some free advice in a moment. Everyone, including the BBC, knows Clarkson and could have pretty well predicted what he would say. That is his signature and, like it or not, it is entertaining to many or maybe even most. To get worked up about it requires taking oneself dangerously seriously and veering towards an attraction to unsmiling, slab faced police states. The fact that young Ed has "felt their pain" and expressed disgust or something like that says all you need to know about what a fun place would exist under his unsmiling, grimacing premiership. Even Dave has felt obliged to say the remark was "silly". In the p.c world Britain inhabits it probably was,but it hardly merits a Prime Minister and Leader of Her Majesty's Opposition to even comment other than maybe to remark "Clarkson is Clarkson". Both would though have been better advised to say nowt.

The advice then: Get a grip folks. It was a J-O-K-E.

Politicians and Journalists unite against co-pariahs the Bankers. They should beware.

Recent days have seen yet more attacks by politicians and the media on the evil bankers.

What a surprise!

Who have been the most vilified pariah groups in the UK over the last year? Yes, you've got it. Despite competitive bids by others such as fat and happy trade union leaders, the three really in the stocks have been greedy allowance abusing politicians, eavesdropping and people-harassing journalists and the source of all financial evil,- the bankers. It is they who can pay for everything and probably single handedly eliminate Britain's defecit.

So what do groups under attack do? Those with access to platforms form an unholy alliance against those without. That's what has happened, pure and simple.

The politicians in particular are playing a dangerous and irresponsible game, many equating bankers with "the rich" . Populist attacks on the rich have come even from people who should be mature and know better. Step forward Nick Clegg this week. George Osborne also looks like giving the bankers another gratuitous kick in his autumn statement (mini budget) this week.

The UK needs both the bankers and the rich. The former for their vast contribution to the national economy despite their disastrous failure to understand the damage that a seriously out of control bonus culture is doing to their own status and to the national psyche and their complicity in the fiasco of ( politician-fuelled) massive and risky lending since 2000 when Brown abandoned "prudence" and thought he had discovered an evergreen money tree. The portrayal of the rich as being somehow undeserving parasites unless they have got there by being a footballer, celeb or X-Factor survivor is very corrosive. The effects of this flow swiftly through all age groups and most disastrously of all down into classrooms, where already too many potential high performers ruin their futures by bending to peer pressure,-often bullying,-and abandoning their books.

The message therefore to the political and media bullyboys is, whether they like it or not, to lay off a group of people who Britain probably needs more than it does them. Didn't their mothers tell them not to play with fire? Is that the sound of flights departing to Hong Kong and Switzerland we hear?

The Pensions Strikes- Runners and Riders

The various parties seem to be limbering up enthusistically ahead of the 30th November day of inaction ordained on behalf of public sector workers by some unions ,- the usual suspects including Unison,Unite, NUT enthusiastically to the fore.

"We just want the government to negotiate" is a frequent cry from the leaders (who will not themselevs be on strike so will not be forfeiting a day's pay) and from some of the less well informed people with the placards. The fact is folks,- they have. They've also made a pretty good offer which still leaves the public sector way ahead of their private sector,- who they are asking to help pay for it) colleagues. Times have changed. People, are living longer and generally in much better health. That means that the old actuarial tables on the cost of pensions have gone out of the window. The maths no longer hold good and something has to give. The amount is much the same by whichever combination of gives is selected. They can be extensions of the retirement age, lower inflation proofing,use of career average rather than (sometimes manipulated) final salary, higher contributions. What the government is proposing is a palatable cocktail of all of these so that none is too painful. Some scope for rejigging could remain but the underlying maths will be the same.It's just a matter of in what configuration people would like the changes served. There are also safeguards for those close to retirement and substantial ring fencing of benefits earned to date to date.

Despite their current head shakings, the previous Labour government recognised the problem and started off to deal with it and all looked set for a resolution until Alan Johnson,- who now supports the strikes,- suddenly got cold feet and backed off at the eleventh hour. That meant that the problem remained and had to be tackled with even more urgency when Labour left office in May 2010 saying famously, even if in jest, "Sorry, there's no money left".

The coalition has therefore had to do the simple maths and come up with the least painful recipe they can find to deliver the figures. the lomnger the procrastination in dealing with the problem the harder the solution becomes. They have taken the bull by the horns and produced a good solution, even if it comes out more expensive to its beneficiaries than the current largely unfunded arrangements. The unions, rather than engage in useful discussions about the future, have as usual simply dug in to defend the past , thereby confirming their general irrelevance in attempts to constructively reshape anything. They don't want to help the coalition to a success . That's not surprising as their party,-the one in whose funding they have an 86% share- is the other one , namely New old Labour. The coalition can never have expected their gratitude and cooperation so will not be surprised by this recalcitrance. The unions are not about the interests of their members per se. They are about their own power, and along the way their ability to control at least the working lives of their members. The strikes will hugely inconvenience and annoy the large number of their members who work in the private sector and see no reason why they should subsidise public service pensions.

Historically a disparity in pension arrangements was accepted as a fair tradeoff as public sector pay was, from top to bottom, generally well below private sector levels. That though has changed radically in recent years. The public sector is now better paid than the private. At the middle and top end one very generously so including now bonuses for just broadly just doing one's job well. As result a new divide is fast opening up between the two sectors. This threatens to distort the future labour market just supersalaries and astronomical bonuses have drawn talent disproportionately to the banking sector and away from other productive businesses and industry.

Who then are the big contestants in all this and where do they stand right now and how are they doing in the public relations and hearts and minds stakes?

First there are the unions. They are the most established long term players and wizzened, battle hardened veterans of years of confrontations, many of which they have manufactured. They have a long history of destroying many of the industries and businesses they have claimed to protect by immersing heads in the sand and putting rear ends in the air and saying "No changes to terms and conditions" and "over our dead body". They have not been greatly helpful in times of national crisis , including two world wars. Althought there are signs that Brendan Barber in particular sees a need to change to working more with than against managements, the embedded DNA with its love of "action" and glorification of battles past is still strong in the union psyche. Politicians come and go but union leaders and their pyramids of people from shop floor representatives upwards tend to stay in position for a lot longer so become much more skilful players in the industrial relations game. They know how to handle new politicians and managements, many of whom at least initiallly tend to approach them almost in a sense of trembling and anxiety. The unions also know the time honoured emotive phrases to trot out. For years we used to hear "It's taking the bread and butter out of our mouths and updated versions of that still appear. Then there wonderful accusations of management bullying which is rich from organisations many of whose represnetatives are highly adept at advising waverers that going along with a strike vote might be in the best interests of their health. They are also masters of misrepresentation and the messages around this dispute show plenty of that. Many members have little clue about the pros and cons of the governement proposals and just accept the union line and convert it into "We've been robbed" sorts of emotion.

Amongst the public sector workers the unions are winning the game. A minority even bothered to vote. Those who did not or voted "No" are subject to the usual pressures, inuendo about being thrown out of the union so that their insurances are no longer valid and so on. They also fear subsequent years of angry silences between stikers and non strikers, so rather than risk their working lives turning sour feel they have no option but to go out on 30th November whether they like it or not.

Amongst private sector workers the unions are being less successful and the question is whether, having tasted the inconvenience of the strikes, private sector workers will become angry with and dismissive of them or whether they will wearily say the government should give up the battle and let them have whatever they want regardless of the cost. That is the battle to come over the next few days, weeks and probably months. Again, their years of battle experience give the unions a good chaNCE of winning that hearts and minds tussle.

And what about The Labour Party? Despite their own previous recognition of the pension problem and the need to tackle it, there is no doubt which side they stand emotionally or opportunistically. Conscious of the risk of a public relations backlash ,their real problem is how not to make this too conspicuous. Some, like Alan Johnson have already broken cover but Ed will continue to wring his hands, feel everybody's pain ,tut tut a lot and try to gain some benefit from whatever the eventual outcome is. On the way, he has already said on Channel 4 News this week "I don't believe we did spend too much". No wonder he is still walking and talking increasingly tediously in the wilderness.

Lastly there is the coalition, trying hard to tack down one piece of the public overspending jelly. Logically, with their leader's history one would have expected them to be doing a first rate job in selling all "the cuts" as essential actions all part of a coherent political philosophy which the electorate can understand, embrace and follow enthusiastically. One fundamental problem is of course that , being a coalition, they can not enunciate a single philosophy. What they have is a sort of mish mash of at least two. The Conservatives are also unsure of what theirs really is anyway. Notwithstanding this and despite all the advice and expertise to hand, the coalition seems to have an almost total lack of understanding of political PR. As result they have dangerously totally to get across a simple message that all their moves are part of this total package designed to take the UK to a financially sustainable future.

Pensions reform means savings now and for evermore. This bridging of all timescales makes its economic resolution even more essential. It should be a very easy-to-communicate message. Instead the government is making a meal of it-and failing. They are babes in the wood compared to the hoary old union veterans. Hence they are making heavy weather of shouting the simple sums across across the heads of the unions and direct to the people involved in a form they can understand. A byproduct of that is more people than one would expect also mouthing words such as "They will be putting in more than they get out" and similar misconceptions. Again whether support for the government will increase or decrease once people feel the pain of being messed about by strikes and even having to give up a day's pay themselves to look after children is unclear, but being saddled with an image of being gung ho for "cuts" for tehir own sake isn't hoing to help Messrs Cameron and Clegg.

For all three contestants in this beauty contest, the challenge for however long the dispute and disruption lasts is knowing when to speak and at what volume and in what tone and when to shut up and let the street fighters run past. Here depth of wisdom and understanding of mass psychology is required. It isn't the territory for emotionally unintelligent people. On the basis of their past experience in these public relations battles the unions should do best. New Old Labour riding on their more savvy and streetwise paymasters' coat tails should come in next and Dave & Co last but not understanding quite why. The positions in the battle itself though could be entirely the reverse. The victory is the coalitions's to lose. If Cameron can keep his nerve (record so far unconvincing) and LibDem and any wavering Tory knees kept from knocking or opportunistic anti- leadership frolics of their own, the pensions deal should be done and dusted, by imposition if necessary, by next Spring. Closing the debate and saying "That's it" is the government's ultimate weapon. They should not fear to use it at the right moment. Howls of protest and further "action" would follow but they would fade as the message inevitably sunk in:"Game's over".

"Dave's got Balls" should be the postscript the Conservatives at least are looking for. It could win him 2015. If he fails............

This and That-Monday 21st November

Firstly let's talk about increasingly dreary Dave who is not responding well to a growing national feeling that after 18 months in power it's time to stop talking, sounding bullish, and then backing off. Instead it's time for him to square his jaw, stand firm and GET THINGS DONE...........

-£400 million boost to housing today. If you're going to do something, do it big. £400million doesn't look big.

-Meanwhile over in Europe it appears that Dave may have done a deal for the UK to duck out of the very restrictive working hours directive so that he can claim he has successfully repatriated some powers from Brusells in return for agreeing to support more centralisation (ie German/French)of power to dictate Eurozone members financial policies. This looks a poor deal in view of the relative long term significance of the 2 issues to both the UK and EU. Merkels has gained another step towards political as well as financial Eurozone and ultimately EU integration in exchange for a relatively minor face saving concession to the UK. Cameron does not look like a good or sufficiently tough negotiator. Add to that his lack of a driving political philosophy and vision and the feeling of lack of impetus becomes real and worrying.

- Our roads are clogging up as well as breaking up. Despite us being an ever more populated country with 4 million more cars forecast to flood onto the roads , we have no national plan to substantially increase capacity, take out bottlenecks or build new motorways. We had more vision on that in the 1940s/50s and 60s. National schlerosis is the only plan we have. There has been talk of putting what money we have into infrastructure development, both because it's needed and for the jobs it can create in the recession. Talk, but little sign of action. Time for something tangible

Elsewhere......

-Boris Island for new Heathrow. Airport in the sky. In UK timescales at least 30/40 years would be needed even if planning, enquiries, reviews, appeals went without a hitch to plan. Add to that slow building (8-5, 5 days a week if the same as T5)= high costs of plant hire and labour and the £50bn easily doubles. Another mind boggling cost would be the devastating effect on the West London economy and the M4 corridor which as far as Wales. Much of this areas success, especialy in attrcating new high-tech businesses is Heathrow related.
On the pros and cons arguments, we are beginning to see an HS 2 pattern of terminological inexactitudes (lies, distortions, misrepresentations to the less genteel) spoken. Much of the stuff about the comparative number of destinations served from London and the major European airports is spurious. Heathrow still serves most of the big business routes considerably better , more often and with more competing airlines than any of its competitors .Its home carrier, IAG's BA has the flexibility to reallocate its slots and do more although it is hamstrung at the moment by the lack of the A380( 2 years away) and 787 (3 years?). Don't forget that BA's focus on First and Business traffic over the past 12+ years has meant small Economy Class cabins and the deliberate offloading of much low yield but high volume leisure business and this has meant that Heathrow's overall passengers numbers have been less than they would have been.

- Saif-al-Islam. His arrest in Libya raises the question of whether he will be tried in the country or handed over to the ICJ at the Hague. If he has a Libyan trial, a guilty verdict looks highly likely and that would almost certainly end with a death sentence. Giving a potential threat a chance to eventually make a comeback is likely to be seen as unwise. There is only one way to remove that possibility for all time and there is no doubt that most Libyans would like that to happen .His chances look better with the ICJ where he would presumably argue that he successfuly mitigated the worst of his father's excesses, built the mutually advantageous bridges between the West and Libya and that everyone was much better off for his efforts. At the very least there would be no noose or bullet and prison life in the Netherlands would be a big improvement on its Libyan equivalent.

- Egypt. After the first peace, now the realities of the new power struggle. Extremists remain on the sidelines, knowing that to pick a fight with the military is unwise. They will let the independent young,- also their target,- do that and take the pain. Like military organisations around the world , their fingers itch for control and they have a fundamental dislike for real democracy and the loss of control over the right to literally call the military shots. Past portents are not good.

-UK. You thought that their voices had faded into the past. You are right,- they should have. Every now and then though the media chuck these ghosts of the past a few quid and give them a platform to regurgitate all the old muddled thinking nonsense. Yes,-we are talking about those masters of Euro-naivity, Messrs Hesseltine and Ashdown, masters of denial . They are again going on about on about how the UK should be in the Euro, how much better off it would be, and now amazingly how it wouldn't have the current level of national debt if it had been in it and subject to Eurocrat regulation. Hmm. Aren't Ireland, Greece, Italy, Spain and the rest also well into the government overspending/debt trough and now facing austerity programmes at least as serious as ours,- but in most cases only implimented much later? Never mind, most people have stopped listening to them quite a while ago so they aren't likely to gain more of a hearing now. It's just an annoying repetitive drone.

That's it for now. Have a good afternoon and evening.

The world rocks- so what does BBC morning news lead with?

The EEC and Euro under threat. Pirates continue to stalk the Indian Ocean. Obama's ratings improve, Asia what did this morning's BBC morning radio news lead with? Spot on,- you've (never) guessed it,-a proposal to ban all smoking in private cars.

Clearly there was a lapse of the imagination here. Maybe a heavy night last night? Could we suggest a quick formula to help duty news editors ? Just consider what a foreign visitor newly arrived in their hotel room and looking for clues about Britain and its engagement with the big, serious issues at home and abroad will think when they turn the telly or radio on and find that this is the biggest issue for Britons today. Will they be impressed or hold their heads in blank amazement? If the latter, find another headline.

St Pauls campers,- What would Giles say?

Looking out of their St Pauls windows at the happy band of campers below, the hapless theologians who run the place will have read the banners "What would Jesus say?" spread out below.

As these senior members of the church establishment have in over a week now have obtained no clarity from above in response to this question, despite the fact that Jesus was on occasion unfashionably blunt and to the point on behavioural matters, could we suggest that they switch to another source of possible inspiration and guidance, the brilliant cartoonist the late (Carl)Giles? His observations and commentary on life from World War 2 through to 1991 were stunning and his occasional cartoons of the clergy at work were some of the best.

Close your eyes and a drawing comes into the mind of a senior churchman standing in the doorway of the cathedral addressing a callow youth of indeterminate species . The reverend gentleman is saying slowly and clearly "Verily I say unto thee that if thou relievest thyself on my steps or carpets I shall truly smite thee"

Problem solved.

Obama Flies home from his European Awayaday.

As Barak Obama and Mrs settled into 1 A and 1K on Air Force One last night, flicked through the inflight magazine AF One 4 U, chose the Burger, Double Fries and Coke light option instead of all that indigestible European stuff, recycled offal, snails,forcefed goose fat and the like, they will have slowly read through the entertainment guide looking for something more stimulating and intellectually demanding than the soap opera they had been watching for the past 36 hours. Something to ease them back into the real world.

They will have learned a lot on their trip and be shaking their heads at the makebelieve world of a would-be United States of Europe headed by at least 2 leaders, a short French bloke and a matronly German lady plus at least three rival Presidents, a Belgian nonentity, a strutting Portugese and another on a six month rotating work experience scheme, none speaking the same language and each representing vastly different states with totally different cultures, economics, societies and needs. There are states large and small. Some are sort of significant in an old fashioned way and some nobody's ever heard of,-especially in Iowa. Many have a long history of loathing and invading each other or at least passing through to invade someone else. They don't intend to drop the resultant feelings now. Bit of a dejeuner du chien really. In moments of boredom when the Europeans totally hijacked the gathering and its intended resolution of the world's problems to messily concentrate on their own, the Obamas will have fiddled with the EU auditorium audio system and found that it's very clever. It can translate any one of 27 languages, some spoken by almost nobody, into 27 others listened to or understood by almost nobody. Hours of endless fun when nothing much is happening except repeats of a Greek bloke promising to do something, then saying he won't and then he might.

The President will be bemused but glad that he's come away with at least one useful decision:"The Chinese are right,- don't touch loans to these people with a bargepole""

Ah, at last, the inflight entertainment programme has come up with something a bit more stretching. Here it is. "An Hour with Mr Bean".

Goodnight Europe.

World Travellers-The Eurozone, China and Dubai Airport.

Two nights ago a Eurozone delegation headed for China to beg for money. Meanwhile a bit further south a young pair of Twigalets passed a couple of middle-of-the-night hours at Dubai airport in transit from London to Johannesburg. What have these two things got to do with each other?

Throwing away any vestige of a negotiating position or inscrutability,the Eurozone team's message beamed from Brussells was simple,- "We're out of money to underpin our currency against possible defaults by some of our more profligate members and the better behaved countries amongst us simply haven't got enough to cover for them all. Please rescue us by helping to prop up the lot." An interesting proposition. One can forgive the Chinese a flicker of a smile before asking the question: "And what's the payback for us?", never mind an underlying "You got yourselves into this,- getting out will cost you". Even within Europe the more thrifty, hard working and disciplined Germans are getting very unhappy at bailing out one fellow Eurozone potential defaulter after another. "Wouldn't we all like the Mediterranean lifestyle ",they ask.

China is a country of harsh realities. Crowded living conditions, long and hard work on the land or in sweatshop factories, and tough discipline are amongst its hallmarks. People survive and advance by sheer hard work and dogedness. Nothing like a welfare state bolstered with benefits, pensions and the like exists. It has strong similarities with industrial revolution Britain and Europe.

It may therefore be difficult to persude China to risk huge amounts of money to prop up a welfare addicted Europe with its poor wortk ethic,legal limitations on working hours,notions that people have a right to money even if they don't want to work and all the rest. Why should China support a life of milk and honey in the Eurozone when they can't afford anything like it at home,- and culturally probably wouldn't even want it? In Chinese eyes the Europeans just don't get it.

So what's that got to do with our two travellers observing life at Dubai airport in the middle of the night, a time of day when Europe's major airports and much of the rest of its economic activity are largely closed so that its earthbound citizens can have a good night's sleep? The Dubai concourse is teaming with people connecting in any combination of directions you can imagine. Not all of them want to be there but are driven by the needs of themselves, their families and their children to seek work or business wherever in the world it is to be found. Traders, workers (there are 1 million Chinese in Africa alone), tourists, family visitors of every social status, race and creed or none flow hither and thither. Within an hour or three they are on their way, leaving the life of yesterday or today for what and wherever their life and business will be tomorrow. A 24/7/365 truly global world is on display ,on the move, and immensely busy. It's about survival and advancement for this generation and the next, not for comfort. A little to the west, Europe has had a good dinner, is sound asleep and strangely irrelevant to most of what these nocturnal travellers are seeing and doing.

There you have it in a nutshell. That's why the gents in China did not hurry to the airport to meet the Eurozone delegation who will arrive to stand naked before them as supplicants. Not a good starting position from which to get a good deal,- or even Chinese tea and sympathy.

The F- word. Two overhearings.

Twigaview, being for family reading,- is not generally given to use of the "f" word or similar but two recent overhearings did deliver an unavoidable wry smile.

First: In the cafe of a large London hospital. 2 ladies of a certain age are awaiting news of the arrival of another grandchild somewhere else in the building.

The comment " I hope it's not another f-----g grand daughter."
Thoughful pause, then ...."I hate girls."

Second: The scene is lunchtime on a large cruise ship in the port of Naples. Two already well fed uniformed members of the local authorities, just on the board at lunchtime in the course of their duties no doubt, have just sat down with well laden plates from the buffet. A Philippino waiter approaches and an exchange takes place accompanied by much shrugging of shoulders and something in Italian. The waiter scuttles over to his Italian supervisor and asks him to interpret. They have asked for two beers. He has asked for a cabin number,-which of course they haven't got but he has insisted on having,- and then gone into unintelligible Italian. The supervisor detatches himself and goes over and talks to the gents concerned. One way or another the matter is resolved. It would have been helpful if he had then taken the time to go back to the original waiter and explained that what he had heard in reply to the request for a cabin number was clearly the Italian for "Why don't you go f- yourself?"

UK's new Transport Secretary and the battle of the Tory Nimby Clans.

The appointment of Justine Greening as the new Conservative/coalition Transport Secretary will be closely examined by two vocal rival southern based party factions. One the one hand are the mainly urban West Londoners whose domain stretches from Westminster out to beyond Heathrow and on the other the more rural Chiltern and Rural Bucks county and country folk. Townies v Counties with the Prime Minister having a foot in both camps.

The previous incumbent was Philip Hammond, firmly in the former group. His predecessor Lord Adonis, latterly probably the best and most interested transport minister for many years, had left on his desk two major strategically important transport schemes, one the privately funded new 3rd runway at Heathrow, almost ready to go, and the other the mainly publicly funded much needed 21st century High Speed 2 rail line from London initially to Birmingham and later to points north. In the face of very noisy party constituency lobbies against both he cancelled Heathrow's runway but continued to run with HS2. In fairness he was constrained by a downright foolish pre election pledge by his boss David Cameron to scrap the runway but he also threw in for good measure an also nearly ready to go inexpensive project to link the airport into the southern railways system. This would have given it much needed direct links to Waterloo and to Reading, Britain's foremost railway hub a few miles out to the west. It would though would have caused additional road congestion in his own Sunningdale constituency. The power of local interests over national ones looked glaring conspicuous. The Chiltern and Rural Bucks near hysterical campaign, partly funded by public money from,- yes, it's true,- the Tory led Buckinghamshire County Council,- has continued unabated .Where MPs have faced any conflict of interests of local or national they have plumped firmly for the former.


What then are the portents for the Justine Greening era in the transport hot seat? Unless this pattern of Ministerial behaviour can be broken and national needs promoted over local ones, the answer has to be probably not good for aviation and London airport capacity but encouraging for HS 2 supporters. Abandoning both projects would leave the Tories open to the charge that they are totally without answers to Britain's growing transport needs and current ever worstening congestion. Worse than that they would be seen to reject anything that could achieve economic growth if it gets in the way of their constituency members' local comfort. This would reinforce some old images of the party which it has long been trying to shake off. It would also say firmly to "the north" that "we really aren't interested in you". Not a good idea on any score.

London's Airports: Heathwick-the daftest idea yet.

Twigaview is very much up for new ideas and things which move the world, people and business forward. New ideas are exciting. Many lead to better futures. Without them we become brain dead. That does not however exempt them from close examination for aspects which could be better and others which are sometimes just daft and lead us to the cliff edge rather than away from it. The newly floated "Heathwick " concept to solve London's increasingly acute problem of lack of Heathrow runways for further development and business expansion may read wonderfully in the world of fantasies but on the real planet it takes very few seconds to respond that to save us all time ,money and wasted print space it should head straight for the bin.

This latest face saving UK Government idea to try to mitigate some of the effects of its David Cameron ordained pre election promise to cancel the third Heathrow runway project by building a £5bn high speed train link between the now constrained airport and the also constrained single runway Gatwick is truly in the 1st April catageory.

Quite simply who would transit through a hub whose runways are 30+ miles apart and connected by a train trip when at Amsterdam, Frankfurt, Copenhagen, Helsinki,the Gulf airports and others they can simply walk from gate to gate or at worst take a brief trip on a people mover/mini train?

That's before one even begins to contemplate the real logistics and costs. Unlike Hong Kong, the UK hasn't grasped the idea that the train has to be brought to the customers not the customers,-via a lengthy hike,-to the train. A Heathrow-Gatwick rail link would probably have to be either customs and immigration bonded, not to mention escape-proof. It would therefore be inaccessible to purely domestic passengers. Alternatively it could be landside and available to all. Its airline transfer users would then have to have to have visas (price £45 a head),and, via queues, go through arrivals controls at one airport and departure controls at the other. Either option would make the volumes of passengers so low that huge subsidies would be required for the train which would have to be free to users to even be considered. For many of the same reasons plus conflicting runway alignment, Northolt doesn't cut it either.

The other options of a Hong Kong, Osaka or Seoul type new airport built on "Boris" or any other Thames Estuary new or existing island also don't look likely flyers. This is UK, not Asia. The single minded dynamic focus on projects of national importance simply isn't British. Whatever is proposed will be fought by armies of environmentalists, planet savers, lovers of rare species of butterflies only to be found in Boris' left ear and countless others. The planning battle alone would take years.

At the time of the General Election in 2000, Heathrow's third runway was nearly ready to proceed. With Transport Minister, Philip Hammond now saying clearly "never", it now looks lost and will very soon become impractical or vastly more expensive unless the Conservatives are prepared to say those unimaginable words "Sorry, we got it wrong. We have to do it after all".

Trains might fly.

The whole saga is a man made national disaster for London and UK's role in air transport and for its long term position in worldwide business and tourism. It is extremely bad news for the struggling UK economy and employment. There will be many beneficiaries, but they won't be Britain or the British.

The Party Conference Season-It's all over and not a leader in sight.

Those were the three weeks they were,-except that they really weren't. At the time it may feel like a feast, with one course quickly following another, but in the same Chinese style it isn't long before you wonder if the conferences really happened. Apart from boosting the the bars, hotels and conference centres of three cities not normally blessed with a surfeit of tourism one searches for any lasting significance at all.

Birmingham and the Lib Dems have been overwhelmingly forgotten. There are big public concerns about unconstrained immigration, the role of the EU in determining British issues, and the abuse of human rights legislation to circumvent what is seen as the spirit of the law. All law is about the balance human rights and obligations and to have a separate code placed on top of that concept looks like removing this essential basis. The Lib Dems, by turning their backs on all criticisms of these things, simply reinforced their own irrelevance as anything but a protest and pressure group, a role to which they are likely to return in the 2015 General Election. Leadership of the nation? No sign of it in Liverpool.


Next up was Old Labour or Labour Classic depending on how it would like to be branded. Their chosen venue was Birmingham, a city which is now really the outer fringe of the south rather than an icon of the north. It's not too far either from the Labour intellectual heartlands of north London and Islington where Milipedia and Peter Simple's Hampstead Thinkers of old took root. The most significant moment, and the only one of fundamental and fundamentalist importance was that Milipedian pause when Ed gave the union carthorses and friends the opportunity to boo Blair and signal that the more inclusive, centrist version of the party which won three successive General Elections is dead and buried. That hopeful and sunny evening of the bussed-in crowds in Downing Street when Blair first came to power in 1997 is ancient history. The booing was the equivalent of scrawling graffiti over the party's most successful recent electoral run of power. An extraordinary but stunningly revealing moment. The party has gone back to its envy filled class resentment homelands. It feels comfortable there. Does enough of the electorate though really feel comfortable with a group which actively and often passionately hates large sections of the community? Again, 2015 looms.


The Tories in Manchester, a place well beyond the ken and interest of many of them, were probably bound to disappoint,-and did. The Theresa/Ken catflap gave the BBC in particular a mouthwatering opportunity to make both look silly and who can blame them for taking it? Wouldn't you? Theresa May was guilty of over egging a minor though true element of a legal case and Ken Clarke seemed to be the only person viewing who hadn't peviously heard about it. Putting the boot into his cabinet colleague wasn't clever. It was just buffoonish and reinforced a widely held old Tory stereotype. Once that pantomime was over it was on to David Cameron's intended rallying speech. Here was the big opportunity for inspirational leadership in a speech from the heart. Speeches from reminder bulletpoint notes are fine and can achieve that. Those which are almost 100% pre-scripted can not. How is it that we have three party leaders who can not or dare not speak off the cuff directly to the viewers and attendees? The ridiculous practice of pre-leaking of content so as to grab the breakfast TV programmes is partly to blame but it comes at a huge cost in credibility and should be abandoned.

Cameron had a great opportunity for a rousing Prime Ministerial oration, full of simple clarity about the true state of Britain Plc, his vision of where it must go and how to get there. He blew it. His rambling hour over, the Conservatives headed south from Manchester no more inspired than when they headed north and with sighs of relief more than excitement. Hopefully those whose seats lined up with windows (not a Virgin Railways speciality) will have spent the journey not on their Ipads but looking out and seeing the vast differences between the various areas through which they sped before the welcome view of the M25 sped into sight. They must understand and embrace the north, not turn their backs on it.As a practical souvenir of their trip and confirmation that they heard the voice of the north while up there the Party must not be swayed by their media savy and well heeled southern groups into abandoning the for once visionary and highly necessary HS2 project. If that is the only solid thing to come out of their autumn excursion they will at least have nailed something tangible into place. The rest,- for all three parties,- was mainly tedium and did nothing to increase customer satisfaction with what are increasingly being labelled as "the political classes", a group unfortunately slotted in somewhere between bankers and estate agents rather than where the nation's leaders should be.

The overwhelming feeling after all three conferences is that visionary leadership just wasn't there. That explains the Chinese banquet feeling. On now to the new Parliamentary season............

UK Party Conference season -Now two down , just one to go,- and no sign yet of a leader or a vision.

Where are we now at two-thirds time in the Party Conference season? Enthused, excited at the displays of new dynamic, forward thinking Britain fit for us and future generations,-a place with a clear view of its role in the world and how to fulfil it effectively and efficiently ? A country whose population can look forward to across the board improvements in life stretching from now way into the future?

Sadly no signs of this yet. Few can even remember what the LibDems had to say or were on about in Birmingham other than that they didn't seem to know how to handle the disproportionate power they wield in the coalition government and seemed intent on going back to their constituencies to prepare for oblivion.

The hoped for Labour revival in Liverpool simply didn't happen. It was back to the future and deliberately so. Ed's pause for the booing of Blair wasn't a mistake. He is politically clever and knew what he was doing and what would happen. He was playing to his sponsors ,the phalanx of old style grim faced union leaders holding 50% of the vote who clapped only things about "a fairer society". By that they seem to mean one with no opportunities for anybody other than maybe themselves with the odd banker or fat cat (union fat cats excepted )lynching thrown in for Christmas Day entertainment. Ed's speech was simply dreadful, full of emotion, pain even, but really about what? The BBC mercifully spared those watching it live 7 minutes of it "due to technical problems". Had the monitoring team just fallen asleep? It was after lunch too. When it came back on air it didnt seem as if anything important, or even unimportant, had been missed. The tone was the same, the utterances and vagueries the same and there was more about good and bad businesspeople who would be taxed or rewarded for their performance on a scale of goodness. In the assessment of this The Party would presumably be prosecutor, jury and judge. Brighter, better, superbly led Britain? Great reasons for you and your children not to emigrate to somewhere lacking all the socioeconomic and class based hangups of Britain ? Sorry, no, none of that from Liverpool.

Last up then are the Tories gathering in the resort city of Manchester this very afternoon. "Social networking" is probably well under way and may have started last night. Maybe even some future Daily Mail headlines (Oh how the threat of The Screws is missed in conference season) got under way. Will the attendees and their leaders look any more attractive to the viewers than those of the previous two weeks or will they just look like a more expensive brand the same "None of the above" we have already seen?

One hopes for the best this week, something stunningly different where minutiae are banished and some big broad strokes followed by some swift big broad actions come stunningly into focus and make us say "Yes!". Will anyone dare to say "Yes we can " rather than "No you can't" or will we get bogged down in more apologies for Dave having been rude or inconsiderate ( sorry, misunderstood by) some lady MPs when he got carried away by the lads and behaved badly in the Commons?

Britain's future isn't about "the cuts", "the gummnt" or any of those dreary things. It's about attitude and a willingness to stop sucking at the dried up teets of welfare dependency and instead to just get up and go for it. It? Anything positive. If not we may as well head for the airport, striking out the " Voluntary contribution to carbon offsetting" option on the booking form as we go.

Now it's back to the box to watch for the great Mancunian revelations and resultant dancing in the streets. Any bets on us being gratified and saying "That was great. Wow, how different! What a change! I can go for that"? The bookmakers probably have an opinion. Over to you to prove them wrong Dave.

UK Party Conference Season. One down , two to go.

Twiga has been on holiday and therefore relying on the international media for reports on the start of the Party Conference season. Somehow first off the blocks, the Lib Dems didn't seem to attract a lot of coverage. Maybe the fact that all three parties have had to choose venues which don't immediately strike anyone as places of possible fun or pleasure has kept the journalists of the world away? Even the former habitual venues in rundown seaside resorts offered some glimpse of maybe fun times past, but Birmingham,Liverpool and Manchester? They are all wonderful places and for those who know them well and live or do business in them there must be endless sources of glitzy entertainment and inspiration. Sadly for most of the rest of the globe their come hither messages just haven't got across so far.

From what we could glean though, the Lib Dem gathering would struggle to be called a warm up event for the other two,- or anything. Nick Clegg, after listening to the proceedings for a couple of days and no doubt inwardly wincing while trying on the surface to both smile and scowl at the politically right moments, did though tell the assembled horde the political and economic truth that the government, of which the Lib Dems are a part, is committed to its austerity programme. Herein lies the rub. It's not the sort of thing many of them wanted to hear. The party has not yet grasped the difference between being in government rather than opposition and the adjustments needed in an even more complex setup called a coalition. This requires a lot of maturity, something that this formerly largely protest group has not yet managed to get its head around. While it is entitled to differences of opinion with its partner, it has an obligation arising from the voters expressed wish for a coalition government, to be broadly supportive at least in public. A Party Conference is very public indeed. Unfortunately its behaviour in Birmingham resembled that of a very young puppy just arrived in a good new home being unable to stop itself piddling all over the carpet. Clegg rescued them by standing firm on economic policy and speaking the way he did but he wasn't popular for doing so.

This weekend it's Liverpool and (Old) Labour. Yesterday's TV had shots of Ed arriving with wife and kids, radiating family values and bonhomie to the party faithful( a short term relationship in Labour circles). This is the Ed whose family values reach to knifing his brothers's ambitions in something seen as close to fratricide. It was a reach for the sickbag moment which should have had the Childline switchboard swamped with calls protesting about the misuse of wives and children in commercials. Now will follow several days of glowing praise for Gordon's old favourites, the "hard working families". What about hard working singles, divorcees, widows, widowers, formerly hard working pensioners and the rest? Not much about them we fear. There will be a lot of feeling other people's pain and the squeezed middle class other than those who vote Tory or remember who it was who when in power for 13 years squeezed them rotten while borrowing like there was no tomorrow-which may turn out to be the economic result? The bankers can expect a lonely week too. They are meant to atone for their sins by now paying for everything for everybody as well building up enough reserves to avoid disappearing with all our savings and at the same time lending money left, right and centre to fund everything anybody wants to do. Theirs is truly a bed of nails and they will be portrayed as lucky not to be being boiled in oil too.

It will also not be a good week for a display of one man one vote type democracy. Thanks to the sharp elbowed Union block votes, the Miliband with the least individual and constituency votes won the leadership election. That signalled not only the defeat of his brother but the end of the line,-for now at least,-of New Labour. Old Labour is back and with it any talk of reducing the Union block vote at the Conference from its existing 50% has gone. Many of the delegates feel much more comfortable back in this mode rather than the modernist Blair type stuff with its ideas of reaching out to people they fundamentally seriously dislike,-eg in particular non public sector people and those not on benefits. This means that the members and constituencies can think and say what they like but if the unions who make up 80% of Labour's finances don't go for it, whatever it is doesn't happen. That's what democracy looks like in the Party and anyone who voices strong objections is rather heavy handedly evicted from the hall. It's very much Soviet style and has been for as long as anyone can remember. You don't want to mess with the heavies at a Labour gathering. Love and brotherhood or comradeship as it was unashamedly called until recently ,and in some quarters still is, extends only to those who say "Yes".

Next weekend it will be the turn of the Tories in Manchester, the sort of place to which many of this heavily southern orientated fraternity would probably rather not go. Some may fly so that they are spared the view of whatever lies between the M25 and the Manchester Central Conference Centre but most will probably go by Virgin train if Mr Branson has managed to persuade Network Rail not to spend the weekend digging up the track. It will have been made clear that to be seen to arrive by public transport is a must and that being driven up the M1 and M6 by Rolls to transfer to the Park and Ride bus for the last few miles doesn't qualify. Removal of First Class headrest covers, Miliband style, may be obligatory for those travelling in the comfy seats but we await the TV shots to confirm whether or not this is the case in the ruling party.

So... lots to look forward to over the next few days and Twiga will be back viewing. For those who don't want to watch, we recommend a quick call to Cunard for last minute cruise bookings. You can emigrate on them too.

Palestinian Bid for UN recognition,- Why the criticism-or surprise?

The Palestinan bid for UN recognition has been rounded on by many including predictably the USA and now the world traveller (but not in a class as low as that) Tony Blair, as "deeply confrontational."

Regardless of the rights and wrongs of the whole issue, this response underlines two problems which have always dogged the Palestinian debate. It is also born of arrogance.

Firstly there is the unsaid message that "Any settlement will be the one we give you ". Secondly there is the the one that "You have little part in determining what it is".

From the Palestinian point of view the direct bid for UN recognition is a sensible one especially as it injects urgency into the seemingly endless issue. What would you do in their situation? Years of pleading their case has got nowhere. Worse than that , Israel has made resolution ever more difficult by continuing to establish new settlements in disputed territories. Each one indicates a new jagged kink and impracticality in the deliniation of the borders of a future Palestinian state to the extent that it could be a said in the future that the location of the settlements actually makes the separation of Israel and Palestine impossible.

Again, what would anyone do in the face of the situation apparently being made more difficult by the day while such as Blair urge meaninglessly and impotently that new discussions should start within a month and a settlement reached within a year? How? By whom? What is their track record over years of non achievement and refusal to insist that no new settlements are built and that existing ones may be subject to being dismantled or placed within the borders of a new Palestine whether the residents like it or not?

Add to that the issue of what confidence the Palestinians might reasonably be expected to have in the even handedness of Blair, a man who took his country into what looked like almost an ideology based war in Iran and later Afghanistan .Again if you ask the question "What would anyone do in the circumstances?" you come back to the answer that the Palestinian approach to the UN is not unreasonable and indeed is a thoroughly understandable vehicle with which to progress their case. A hysterical "Can't do that because we don't like it" reaction simply casts doubt on the good faith of those who shout it, especially when, other than plucking new timescales out of the air, they say nothing about what they will actually do to achieve delivery.

Autumn Travel Guide... When to escape the Party Conferences.

For those dreading their TV screens and daily newspapers being hijacked by the procession of Party Conferences with their tedious interviews, hand wringings, sharing of your pain, posturings, shouts of yah boo from the media and all the rest, here is a guide of where not to be and when starting in about 3 weeks time.

For those allergic to Birmingham and the Lib Dems, be away 17-21 September to be sure to miss the utterances of the party that is sort of partly in government but is largely hugely embarrassed by it and would rather be back on the barricades or just in more familiar and comfortable obscurity.

For those who find the tag "Too far and too fast" applied to anything that might produce a more efficient, higher quality, less buurocratic or smaller state sector, has begun to grate and become just too tedious especially when not balanced by anything sounding like "but here's what we would do..",Liverpool and Labour are definately worth a miss. That's 25th to 29th September.

And for the rest who would like to see Dave enunciate a firm political philosophy and resolutely tough it out rather than try to be all things to all Lib Dem and Tory people and who know they are likely to be disappointed, Manchester from 2nd to 5th October is the place to avoid.

In fact somewhere pleasant, small and far away nowhere near a British network TV or newspaper will be the best guarantee of calm blood pressure, no disappointments and be the best place to go. See your travel agent now.

Oh the torment of the spectre of unfairness.- " Let us wallow. Do nothing""

The UK's public (ie state) education system is despite pockets of excellence too often crap. Most people know that. Try to change it in any way, even for the better and howls of protest go up "Backdoor privatisation" "Unfair to some" etc. "Save our (crap)schools" campaigns break out all over the place.

The UK's NHS (National Health Service) is despite pockets of excellence too often crap. Most people know that, especially those who sit for hours on hard plastic chairs at A&Es while leading politicians are quietly whisked in unseen via the back door. Try to change it in any way, even for the better, and howls of protest go up "Backdoor privatisation", "Unfair to some" etc. "Save our NHS "campaigns break out all over the place.

It must seem like head in hands time for anyone trying to improve anything in this benighted isle. They have our sympathy and the warning that it's soon going to get a whole lot worse,- Party Conference time is coming up.

UK Railways and those German trains-Labour fall over themselves,-again.

Much steam and smoke has been generated from the UK's Labour Party camp following the award of the contract for the rather late running Thameslink 2000 project.

The terms and conditions attatched to the bidding process by the former government headed by one Gordon Brown, late of these columns, whose two closest henchmen were Eds Miliband and Balls did not create a level playingfield for British companies. Indeed they favoured other non UK EU bidders. It was no surprise therefore when Germany's Siemens, already a supplier of high quality trains to the UK defeated Canada's Bombardier (European HQ:Berlin) who happen to have an assembly plant at Derby. They won fair and square. Indeed some factors were not taken into account but that was down to Labour's own legal stipulations. Once the bidding parameters and conditions were issued to all parties and they had responded there was no way they could be ammended without risking enormous damages being awarded to whoever produced the best deal under them. Labour know that full well although they seem to be telling the public that it's not true.

The next big contract pending is for Crossrail trains to operate on the route being created between Shenfield in Essex and Maidenhead in Berkshire. It was due to open for bidding on much the same terms in December this year. The government has now announced a delay to the process to enable the conditions to be rewritten so as to give companies with building facilities in the UK an equal chance, but no guarantee, of winning thanks to a broader range of considerations.

One would have thought that would have brought widespread acclaimation from the Opposition. How naive can we get? Not so. Anna Eagle the opposition spokesperson shreiks : " If ministers are now saying it's possible to review the Crossrail contract how do they explain why they have cost British jobs by refusing to do the same for the new Thameslink trains as Labour has repeatedly demanded?"

How does one explain to Ms Eagle and colleagues that it was her party who made it unlikely that Bombardier could win the Thameslink contract and it is the wicked Tories (primarily, though the Lib Dems might be in there somewhere ) who are now enabling them to bid for the next big one on equal terms? Such is the quality of political intervention at the back end of the silly season. With party conference time coming up there are signs that we are in for heavy doses extended silliness and on the part of Her Majesty's Loyal Opposition it will no doubt be wrapped in the increasingly boring and yawn inducing packaging of "too much, too soon" at the intellectual end of the arguments and " Cameron and cronies are toffs" at the other. Could we suggest that, far from being too long, the parliamentary holidays are far too short?

Gaddafi- Final choices.

The street celebrations in Tripoli yesterday did give the feeling of "Hey , wait a moment, this may be a bit premature. He hasn't gone yet". And so it has turned out.

Why? Ian Kershaw's new book "The End: Hitler's Germany 1944-45" gives at least one clear answer. Hitler fought to the end at vast cost of German and the Allies' lives at least partly because he had no option. Unconditional surrender was demanded and to him then and Gaddafi now that meant at best "A fair trial" whose outcome would be no different or more comfortable than an unfair one. He would be hanged. That just isn't an attractive proposition whatever choices of last meal are on offer.

A safe passage to a compound in some less than desirable spot might do the trick. Even the most barren rock (ideal) would be seen by most dictators as a better prospect.

Feet on the Street- Less can do more.

A byproduct of the London riots has been calls from quarters various ranging from Boris (who has a mayoral election to win next Spring or all those nice seats at the Olympics might go to his friend Ken) to the Police Federation (union) and all sorts of others for "the cuts" not to be applied to Police numbers,- or indeed anything else.

As in nearly everything to do with "the cuts" so far, there is fundamental confusion between numbers of heads employed and their effectiveness. The Government missed a vital trick at the very outset of the defecit reduction programme by not insisting that cost cutting did not mean stopping doing things. Up and down the country Government departments and councils ,particularly Labour ones who do not want "the cuts" to succeed anyway, have drawn a straight line equation between cost reductions and activity reductions.

We have said before and will keep saying,-that equation is invalid.

Take for example Police or customer service people in any business on the beat or station/airport/shop floor. One person, armed with all the required training and information plus now modern communications, can be very effective a high percentage of the time they are deployed. What happens if a second is added and they work in pairs? A 100% increase in effectiveness? Sadly not. Being human, they will start to talk to each other. That's pleasant and comfortable and doesn't involve difficult people,questions, exertion or even danger. Quite quickly a high percentage of their time is spent inwardly focused on each other. Their time/cost effectiveness plummets. The larger the group gets the steeper this downward productivity curve gets. Just look at two police on the beat,- how much more would they be looking around and taking things in if they were on their own? The next time you go to an airport take a look at what the staff are doing if they are at desks, boarding gates etc in multiples. Most frequently they are talking,-to each other,-often with backs to the customers.

As a rule the closer the number of people employed to the real demands of the job in hand the more effective and outwardly focused on the task they will be. Add more and their individual performance drops off. It's human nature. The smallest number will also probably be happier and more satisfied by their jobs through achieving more, learning more and being responsible for more. No wonder unions, driven by the financial need to keep memberships and subscriptions up ,hate to even contemplate "more with less". Happy people aren't good for recruitment. As for Boris,-well, he just doesn't understand it and again there is that election to win.

The end of the riots.....the coup de grace....

.... was of course that it started to rain.

Discomfort = game over.

Added to the fact that the police changed their tactics, also causing discomfort to the participants, that should give another clue to what works. "Watch and observe" certainly doesn't.

The end of the riots ( Political) truce. Labour promises/threatens its own enquiry.

As predicted, Thursday's rare House of Commons appearance of unity in condemning the rioters without too much political jostling for position hasn't lasted long. The mirages of potential glories from grandstanding and being "more aware of the sociological causes than thou" are just too strong.

Ed Miliband sees a great opportunity to offside David Cameron as being uncaring, out of touch and all those things by promising that if the Government does not hold an enquiry into the origins of the riots then the Labour Party will. Maybe he's overlooked the fact that most of the young participants spent their formative years under the 1997-2010 Labour governments but we can safely assume that any Labour "enquiry " would gloss over this small fact and instead home in on the evil "cuts" its successor has had to introduce in the last 15 months to try to erase the ongoing annual structural spending defecit generated during those years. Transparency is a great thing but Ed is so transparent as to be totally see-through.

Away from the whinges of the Opposition but in tune with them are other groups who are trying and will continue to try to ride the riots as evidence of the need to avoid cuts. Sadly amongst them are currently some Police leaders who are risking their required political neutrality by indulging in a little light " We got it right, the politicians were on holiday and we ourselves changed tactics at the right moment" banter. Nice try but very clearly the Police, for all the bravery of many individuals, did not get the first two or three nights right. Their primary duty has to be to defend life and property and say what they might, they failed to do so. Once they did follow Manchester's lead and literally crack down on the out of control young it was very quickly game over. To then say that effective policing is threatened by cuts (only in fact to 2002 manpower levels in fact) is nonsense. Their real problem is that as in many other areas of the public sector and ex public sector, a myriad of "Spanish practices" -a term probably unfair to the Spanish,- has grown up adding cost and undermining numbers and effectiveness on the front line. Amongst these, rostering, overtime and how it is calculated,allowances and manning levels (how often do you see a solitary policeman?) are all in need of thorough examination and overhaul. The numbers are and will be adequate,- it's what they actually spend their time doing that's the problem.

This would be a much better nettle for Ed to grasp. He could join in working on a total redesign of public sector effectiveness and the working practices, manning levels and reward systems to make it deliver more at lower cost. The private sector has been doing this for a good thirty years and much more if you read some company histories. Unfortunately it is a total no go area for his paymasters, the Union barrons who effectively control Labour Party policy. One very useful byproduct of the disturbances will therefore go untackled by the Party and instead they will wander in the wilderness of urban deprivation while denying that their own legacies of poor education standards,working hard at school being uncool and a bullyable offence in some communities have anything to do with it. They will simply carry on saying that welfare dependency and the rest are not great problems or that they do not exist at all. For all their expressions of reasonableness and wishing to genuinely find solutions there is only one scapegoat they are really after, -"The cuts". They may throw in bankers and a few others as well but the cuts are the real target. Labour benefits if they can prevent the government carrying on with defecit reduction and showing that balancing the books has happened and begun to work by the time of the next General Election in 2015. For this reason Cameron may well have to head off Labour's own enquiry by announcing a government sponsored one. In that case Ed will just have to make do with claiming it was he who forced a reluctant Cameron to hold it. That way he would hope to achieve some good PR with the expenditure of very little effort. Another brief chapter in the everyday story of political folk. Just don't look for any integrity here.

Just two more weeks of the holiday "silly season" to go. Then we get onto the even sillier one. It's called Party Conference time.

It's only 8th August and they're coming back!- London burns. The race for the political high ground.

We only waved goodbye to our political leaders last week but here they are heading back to London.

Why?

Anarchic riots have broken out and, thanks to modern tweeting and the rest, the flames have quickly spread from north London round to the south, including now the unlikely location of Croydon and north again to Birmingham .Rentamob which used to take a while to assemble and therefore be reasonably easily contained has been replaced by Flashmob which is a much more difficult proposition. Incitements to violence can be signalled between groups in an instant and the reaction can be very swift as well as unpredictable. No easily detected buildup over months is needed. The security services have a new start point to look for . The "mobs", are generally quite small and do not necessarily come from the district where the action, damage and destruction takes place. They therefore have no interest in the livelihoods of the local people. They are far outnumbered by onlookers but sadly these are unwilling to risk life and limb by standing up to them. Violence and looting goes unchecked until enough police are on hand to quell it.

So far so bad.

Politically it causes an enormous dilemma to (deservedly) holidaying political leaders. The best thing they could do is to stay away and come back as refreshed as possible. However they and their advisors have a problem. Tabloid -and even allegely more up market,-media have been itching to label them as negligent and guilty of "Crisis, what crisis?" behaviour. Ever since the Royal Family were pilloried for not immediately returning to London when Princess Diana died and ended up being offsided and upstaged by damp eyed, hand wringing Tony Blair, the question for leaders has not been what they really should do(in this case stay away and deny oxygen to the troublemakers) but what they need to be seen to be doing. The Prime Minister also knows that if he doesn't return he risks the same offsiding by pictures tomorrow of Ed Miliband touring burned out buildings, shaking hands with people who have lost their homes, businesses and possessions and "feeling their pain". Cameron will be just in time as both Miliband and Harriet Harman are also heading back tonight. Ed no doubt to look serious and outstretch his palms, while Harriet nods slowly and thoughtfully.

So where now?

The original spark of the disturbances lost its relevance to them very early on. It is no excuse for the incitement and actions now taking place which leave all other then the participants worse off. Some who by sheer hard work have built up their businesses, bought their flats and improved their lives or even just managed to hang on to what they've got have seen their livelihoods destroyed in a few mindless nights.

The first thing has to be to extinguish the violence and restore law and order and security of individuals to the areas concerned and choke off any further outbreaks before they take hold. It doesn't help and probably isn't just coincidental that we are now in the long school holidays. Many of the hooded looters are still at school or college .

The second thing is when that has been done that has been done and probably large numbers arrested there will have to be a firm smack of justice and the message being that that whatever the frustrations of young lives, wanton destruction is never warranted and is quite simply a criminal act.

The third thing and much more stretching problem is how to deal with the new ability of anarchistic groups and ordinary criminal troublemakers to generate widespread disorder almost anywhere out of the blue and in a very few minutes. That's the really difficult one and it has to be a top priority in any civilised state.

A state,-and government-has to protect its people. Cameron will be determined to do so but Ed will be looking for every opportunity to portray him as failing in this duty. Ed must be longing to reach out in a moment of monumental cynicism and opportunism for the word "Cuts". That's why Dave is back tonight.

It's August. Our dear leaders are away. They should be more often,- and further.

Yes, it's hols time again and thankfully last year's chattering and pontificating classes ,- yes that includes the Archbishop of Canterbury too,-obsession with saving the planet by not flying is not the 2011 fashion. That gives our political leaders a little more leeway. Clearly they have to look serious and visibly share our pain as we set about paying for the Blair/Brown borrowing and spending spree but one can just about get away with making it across the channel to Europe. After all we are all Europeans now,- aren't we Silvio? We may not have quite got the hang of afternoon siestas or fully grasped that "popping in for a quick one on the way home" doesn't mean a half in the Red Lion by the station, but we do have few star spangled blue flags around and there is the brilliant Eurostar even if the French have so far stopped it going anywhere other than France or ,OK, Belgium but that's more or less part of France isn't it, Waloons excepted of course. Oh dear, it's all too complicated but yes we can go there by ferry or low cost airline and still be more or less sharing the pain. We are not sure that British Airways Cityflyer out of London City is quite RyanAir Dave but we will give you the benefit of the doubt.

Where then have the Big Three gone to make best use of their new increased freedom and range? It used to be the Big Two, but coalition etiquette demands a temporary elevation of status for the Lib Dem leader even if many of his knife fingering "team" would rather be lurking scowling in backbench obscurity influencing nothing but with no restraint on hare brained and hand wringing utterances.

Dave has gone to a smart Tuscan villa where he is hopefully sharing nobody's pain but his own should he over indulge in the excellent local produce. Poor Nick is for about the 16th year running imaginatively enjoying the company of his outlaws in an allegedly dusty Spanish village, again hopefully within an arm's length of the best of local produce and a corkscrew. That should reduce the pain. Ed though is said to be test driving his newly modified nasal tubes somewhere along the UK south west coast so there could be a bit more real pain sharing there. It is uncertain how the tube straightening might affect his voice but he should be able to sleep better and maybe enjoy a recurring nightmare that he will turn out sounding like Margaret Thatcher. On the other hand if he were to holiday north of the border he could come back with the resonance of his mentor Gordon Brown. That would be a nightmare for the rest of us.

For all the media-led carping and whining whenever politicians take holidays, cross the Channel, stay in a decent hotel or heaven forbid have fun , we should all want them to have more. They need to lighten up, stroll about unattended by grovelling functionaries, security men,or local party worthies. They should sit in cafes, on buses , trains (not in reserved carriages though) and listen and talk to people. In other words they should strive to live normal and pleasant lives with normal interactions and normal non-patronising conversations. They should also see and hear some of the rough stuff. Try, incognito, A&E on a Saturday night. (When Blair was rushed in to an NHS hospital with a possible heart problem the order came out that he should nor see or be seen by any of the regular clients.) Party leaders and Prime Ministers in particular are frighteningly cut off from the world inhabited by the rest of the population. They can rarely even walk down the road to buy a newspaper. As result they rely on others and the media to bring them news of what is going on outside and they lose their own feel for it. That's just at home in the UK.

Beyond the UK their lack of reach and breadth of experience and understanding is even more startling. For the people responsible for our political destiny they have astoundingly little. They have met few foreigners in non business circumstances and with few exceptions and some now distant gap years have not lived amongst them. On official visits they will operate to tight schedules with too little sleep and few off duty moments or chances to just stroll about. They could be anywhere and they will not even experience the normal delights and hassles of travel, queues, officials, wrong room keys, ripoff con artist taxi drivers or other travel experiences. They will not have sat at a small tropical airport in the rainy season or across the road in a bar in the dry season awaiting the distant sound of an approaching aeroplane and hoping it's theirs. Their lives, even when travelling , become very one dimensional and sanitised as well as time-pressured and measured in value in pounds or dollars per hour. Sadly there is no column in the accounts book for the value of time spent looking, listening, watching, thinking or even just enjoying doing nothing while in doing so revitalising the batteries and clearing the mind ready for the next big thing.

We should encourage all our politicians and especially the Big Three to travel frequently, widely and informally. They need to see and feel the adrenaline of the big Asian cities, the buzz and the hum of activity against a background of no benefits culture, no restrictions of when and how people can work , where smart school children set out every morning with a parentially driven inner need to work and do better. The Scandinavian countries, Europe,the USA, Africa, Australasia, South America all offer interest and instant education to the visitor as do a host of smaller regions and places. They provide the message and intellectual stimulus of "There are other ways to live and to do things. Don't think for a moment that you have the only and right answers" They open the windows of the mind and invite people to think of the big picture, the big ideas, what doing things differently could do for them and their worlds. For the politician it should take them away from the idea that protecting a narrow view or interest is a sensible use of the brain. It should also tell them that if UK Plc isn't prepared to understand, adapt, energise and compete it faces a very bleak future because for sure others understand what survival and advancement looks like and they aren't about to slow down to leave room for us to indulge ourselves. Our union leaders could get out and about a bit and grasp a few of the realities of the world as well,-but maybe that's just a dream too far.

Go well!

Dave's war in fogs and sandstorms. Time to slide out.

David Cameron is the fourth recent British Prime Minister to have embarked upon a military adventure.

Only the first of these, Margaret Thatcher's swift campaign to reverse the Argentine invasion and occupation of the Falkland Islands had a clear, well defined objective understood and supported by most of the British population. It was a triumph of civilian and military logistics with a beginning, middle and an end. The arrival of the fleet back in Portsmouth, the vast majority of the troops back at their UK barracks and the RAF aircraft at their bases drew a line under the campaign itself. The ongoing support to the Falklands Government was also marked by clarity and simplicity. No religious or tribal factors complicated the picture. Success was possible and it was decisivley achieved in a relatively short time. Thatcher came out of it as a leader with excellent judgement and way beyond her rivals in courage and determination. From having just previously flagged in the opinion polls her ratings soared and she went on to easily win the next General Election.

The three subsquent adventures have been very different and left the next two sponsoring British leaders seriously damaged and a third now threatened. What's gone wrong and why aren't they national heros? Very simply these conflicts have lacked clarity throughout. Why did we go there? There was no UK popular cause and we were inconsistent in where we intervened and where we didn't. Despite claims that they made UK streets safer, they manifestly did not. They did not involve protecting or reclaiming British territory. They were not largly solo British operations and in two of them, Iraq and Afghanistan ,Britain was subserviently tagging along behind the USA. In the third the USA wisely decided to leave most of the action to the Europeans. In their absence Cameron fell over himself to sign up with two unlikely allies, Berlusconi and Sarkosy. Neither is high in UK trust, credibility or any other positive ratings.

In Iraq the initial military "shock and awe "campaign followed by the drive of the armed columns from Kuwait to Baghdad was brilliantly successful. From then on it was all downhill. The moment a US soldier draped a US flag over the head of the toppled statue of Saddam Hussein was the beginning of the descent into floundering chaos. The whole thing has been a disaster. There was no plan for what was to happen and for the basic running of the country. The rush for de-Baathification shredded all the government ministries of most of the staff who organised day to day life and provision of police and public services. The viable and fully functioning infrastructure of the cities, towns, villages, roads, railways , water supply, distribution of goods was often reduced to ruin and rubble and bombed back decades. More Iraqi civilians were killed than Saddam's highly unpleasant security forces can ever have dreamed of destroying in a hundred years. Thankyou Tony Blair . A stable and officially secular country with a largely pro-western if difficult and repressive government has been replaced by a highly unstable one which could go in any number of different directions. None of these is likely to produce the dream of a western style democracy in which MPs politely refer to each other as the Hon Member for Basra South etc. That cosy vision is simply naive. Britain has now pretty much and very quietly slid out of it while still muttering that the casualties were a worthwhile sacrifice. For whom?

Then came Afghanistan which can be labelled as both Blair's and Brown's. The British Defence Minister, John Reid, stated that it it may well be that the mission , whatever it was , would be accomplished swiftly without a drop of British blood being shed. What planet were the politicians living on? Anyone who had visited Afghanistan or even flown over it and pondered its terrain through an aircraft window could have told them that the geography, climate and geology make any form of successful territorial occupation unthinkable . Anybody with a small knowledge of history could have told them that the only things which have ever united the country's disparate groups have been either iron firm rule or the presence of a foreign army who everybody instinctively wanted to expel. The British learned that in the 19th century, the Russians in the 20th. Now the British and Americans are learning it again in the 21st. Is history that badly taught in the UK ?(Answer sadly "yes, even apparently at Eton). Had nobody in the Blair sofa circle even read Flashman? Again , the prospect of a western style democracy is almost non existent and the elimination of the Taliban is illusory. The "allies" may just about occupy territory by day but at night..............? The slide out is well under way and again it will be said that the sacrifices will have been worthwhile. Again, whose sacrifices ? For most in Britain the view will remain that the country should never have become involved anyway . Any threats to its national security (eg Al Quaeda and its franchises) should be tackled far closer to home rather than nebulously and hideously expensively at arms length in a country few British begin to understand.

When the Conservative/Lib Dem coalition replaced Labour in May 2010 it was assumed that there would be no new Middle Eastern adventures. Then suddenly there came "The Arab Spring" and an extraordinary turn of events. Immediately before this series of very different and uncordinated uprisings, protests square occupations and demonstrations Britain had been strongly represented at an arms fair in the Gulf, ready to do business with more or less all comers. The UK had long and deep relationships around the Gulf, including with Bahrain. It had also painstakingly courted the Gaddafi regime in Libya hoping to influence it and continue moving it away from its previous support of sundry terrorist movements including at one time the IRA. The Arab Spring seemed to bring a rush of adrenaline to numerous political heads and almost immediately we,- that's to say Cameron,- were in the thick of it and seemingly unable to hold ourselves back from joining in. It was an almost compulsive reactive act and certainly not one founded in wisdom or Britain's centuries of Middle East experience. The national corporate memory has it seems been lost or at best shunted into a siding as irrelvant by a new "history is bunk " generation of politicians. Maybe they never knew that we once knew and it had all become in Rumsfeld language "an unknown known".

The question now is how can the UK extricate itself from military involvement in Libya with a modicum of honour? If Cameron doesn't find a quick solution the affair could bounce into Labour's hands as a high profile example of his lack of judgement, a theme they have already been peddling on other issues especially his unfortunate employment of Coulson. We are now into the European August works shutdown. Palace of Westminster dwellers head for the hills of Tuscany, France ,Spain or if "sharing your pain" to windswept British former resorts. This year coincidentally August overlaps almost entirely with Ramadan. There could be an opportunity there for some deep burrowing and a reappearance in September saying "We're out of there. Don't know what all the fuss was about. Anyone remember?" For that to happen we don't need Liam Fox or anyone else to be going on about "supporting the Libyan people" to the end,- especially as we don't seem too clear about who the various Libyan people are or where the end is anyway. Where the various groups stand seems to be a mystery too. We stand between an August sea fog at home and sandstorms various in the Middle East. Ideal cover for a tactical retreat and a new start.