THE NEXT RECESSION...

The spectre of “Financial Crisis 2” continued to loom over global markets yesterday after Dubai’s revelation that it may not be able to meet its debt obligations.

Stock markets in Asia and the United States fell sharply while the dollar and Japanese yen rose as investors shifted their money to their perceived safety. UK banks were also revealed to be the biggest lenders to the United Arab Emirates, which includes Dubai, with more than $50 billion owed by the Gulf state’s residents.

In another blow to the beleaguered UK banking sector, the Royal Bank of Scotland emerged as the largest single loan-arranger to Dubai World, the state-owned conglomerate that sparked this latest financial crisis when it sought a standstill on its debt repayments on Wednesday.

RBS has received £££billions from the UK taxpayer to bail them out so far, now this could get even worse!

I believe that we are still in severe economic peril and a combination of political foolishness and commercial stupidity means that 2010 will see the global economy dip even further. Those who run with the suckers pally and believe the banks are on the road to recovery are fooling themselves!

EAST BELFAST - FEAR AND LOATHING...

Well, I got slated in certain quarters for using the instance of anti-social behavior in west Belfast to raise the general topic of teenage loutishness. So, by way of contrast, I wanted to talk about the 19-year-old woman who has been raped in east Belfast.

She was walking back from a shop along Newtownards Road at about 0530 GMT on Saturday when the attacker came up behind her. He dragged her into an alleyway behind a pub and assaulted her. Police are seeking help from a taxi driver who had brought the woman to the shop from a fast food outlet. She was dressed in pyjamas and a coat.

First things first, this is a sickening crime and anyone coming to ATW regularly knows my view on how rapists should be punished. I trust the guilty party is brought to book asap.

But, and let say that this in NO WAY lessens the attack, what on earth was this teenager doing walking the streets of east Belfast at 5.30am in "pyjamas and coat"? Is there perhaps something else to this story? Maybe she was on medication or ill for I can see little other reason to be out, in the cold, at that time, wearing such clothing? As I say, none of this lessens the wicked crime but some of the details on these stories make one wonder about what goes on out there, in the big bad world. The streets of Belfast, north, south, east and west, contain danger at times and this girl was unfortunate to come across it. I wonder how quickly it took the police to respond? What is the conviction rate for Rape?

CLIMATEGATE DOWN UNDER

Writing in the Telegraph, James Delingpole explains how Australia is leading the revolt against Al Gore’s great big AGW conspiracy – just as the Aussie geologist and AGW sceptic Professor Ian Plimer predicted it would.

ABC news reports that five frontbenchers from Australia’s opposition Liberal party have resigned their portfolios rather than follow their leader Malcolm Turnbull in voting with Kevin Rudd’s Government on a new Emissions Trading Scheme.

The Liberal Party is in turmoil with the resignations of five frontbenchers from their portfolios this afternoon in protest against the emissions trading scheme.

Tony Abbott, Sophie Mirabella, Tony Smith and Senators Nick Minchin and Eric Abetz have all quit their portfolios because they cannot vote for the legislation.

Senate whip Stephen Parry has also relinquished his position.

The ETS is Australia’s version of America’s proposed Cap and Trade and the EU’s various carbon reduction schemes: a way of taxing business on its CO2 output. As Professor Plimer pointed out when I interviewed him in the summer, this threatens to cause enormous economic damage in Australia’s industrial and mining heartlands, not least because both are massively dependent on Australia’s vast reserves of coal. It is correspondingly extremely unpopular with Aussie’s outside the pinko, libtard metropolitan fleshpots.

Though the ETS squeaked narrowly through Australia’s House of Representatives, its Senate is proving more robust – thanks not least to the widespread disgust by the many Senators who have read Professor Plimer’s book Heaven And Earth at the dishonesty and corruption of the AGW industry. If the Senate keeps rejecting the scheme, then the Australian government will be forced to dissolve.

This would be great news if a government actually falls due to trying to force through AGW taxation.

CLIMATEGATE - CHANGING THE GAME..

Excellent insight here from Gerald Warner explaining how the East Anglia emails on AGW are impacting across in the USA.. 

Fox News, Barack Obama’s Nemesis, is now on the case, trampling all over Al Gore’s organic vegetable patch and breaking the White House windows. It has extracted some of the juiciest quotes from the e-mails and displayed them on-screen, with commentaries. Joe Public, coast-to-coast, now knows, thanks to the clowns at East Anglia’s CRU, just how royally he has been screwed.

Senator James Inhofe’s Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works has written to all the relevant US Government agencies, acquainting them with the nature of the e-mails. But the real car crash for Obama is on Capitol Hill where it is now confidently believed his Cap and Trade climate legislation is toast. It was always problematic; but with a growing awakening to the scale of the scientific imposture sweeping the world, as far as the Antipodes, the clever money is on Cap and Trade laws failing to pass, with many legislators sceptical and the mid-term elections looming ever closer.

At the more domestic level, the proposed ban on incandescent light bulbs, so supinely accepted in this servile state of Britain, is now provoking a huge backlash in America. US citizens do not like the government coming into their houses and putting their lights out. Voters may not understand the cut and thrust of climate debate at the technical level, but they know when the Man from Washington has crossed their threshold uninvited.

The term that Fox News is now applying to the Climategate e-mails is “game-changer”. For the first time, Anthropogenic Global Warming cranks are on the defensive, losing their cool and uttering desperate mantras such as “You can be sceptical, not denial.” Gee, thanks, guys. In fact we shall be whatever we want to be, without asking your permission.

Quite so. The AGW agenda needs buried. It has little to do with helping make our planet a better place and everything to do with securing more tenure for on the make scientists and extra tax revenues for on the make politicians.

I dare say that we all agree that the planet has a changing climate, that we want to make it cleaner place for generations to come, and that we have an obligation to take care of what God has given us. But that is a LONG way from the fanaticism that charcterises the Watermelon generation X - green on the outside but red on the inside - plus ca change.   

WHAT A CROCK, MONSIEUR BARNIER

Yesterday, I reported the grim news that the French had secured a vital new EU post of Internal Market Commissioner.

As you know. Labour had claimed that they had seen off French ambitions. Just more lies from Brown and co.

But WHO is Mr Barnier and what does he believe that should cause us GREAT anxiety.

Mr Barnier is expected to push hard to give Brussels the power to regulate financial institutions here instead of the British authorities.

He helped draw up the original European constitution and has called for an end to Britain’s EU budget rebate.

The new commissioner has also repeatedly made statements attacking ‘too much free-market liberalism’ and called for ‘intervention’.

French government officials are on record as saying they want Paris to become ‘a rival’ to London, which is Europe’s dominant financial market and vital for the UK economy.

City insiders fear tighter regulations could drive British-based finance firms offshore or push them to list on the New York stock market instead.

Apart from THAT, why he's a swell guy. This appointment places an EU dagger at the throat of the UK's vital financial independence. It is almost impossible to exaggerate the disaster that the implementation of the Lisbon Treaty represents for the United Kingsdom and the consequences of what is now being unveiled by the EU elite will resonate for decades to come.

SMOKING CAMERON OUT...

Fascinating to read that the UK Independence Party had offered to disband if David Cameron agreed to hold a referendum on the ratified Lisbon treaty.

Lord Pearson of Rannoch, UKIP’s newly elected leader, says that he proposed the deal after the party’s strong showing in the European elections.

He reveals that he approached Lord Strathclyde, the Tory leader in the Lords, six months ago and asked him to tell Mr Cameron that if he guaranteed a referendum and gave the Conservative Party a free vote then UKIP would disband and its members stand down. He received no answer. Several months later Mr Cameron announced that the Tories would not hold a referendum.

Lord Pearson adds: “A referendum on a ratified Lisbon Treaty would have become about in or out, which is why the political class wouldn’t do it.”

Pearson has called the Cameron bluff. The TRUTH is that the Lib/Lab/Con are devoted to the EU project and will do anything to ensure that the gravy train continues.  Cameron, in particular, sickens me since he pretends to be angered about EU intrusion into our lives but at the same time he wants us to stay in the EUSSR protectorate.

THE PAKISTANI PROBLEM..

I was reading that Counter-terrorism police and Whitehall officials believe dozens of extremists could have arrived here by posing as students or legitimate visitors.

They are concerned both by the relatively lax checks that are made on the visitors before they arrive and by the ease with which they can outstay their visas without anyone noticing. As many as 13,000 visa applicants may have entered the country from Pakistan in a seven month period since October last year without any checks on their supporting documentation. The security services fear that because most do not mix with home grown terrorists, they are able to operate under the intelligence radar, acting as sleeper cells until ready to launch attacks in Britain.

Given what we know about how radicalised a significant number of Pakistanis are there is simply no excuse for lax security. In my view extra attention should be directed the way of anyone from that country seeking to enter the UK. My need to profile more specifically and I suggest that given Al Queda's grip on a section of Pakinstanis means that they should be scrutinised in considerable detail.

The Eternal Tantrum

I thought I may aswell start the post-holiday blogging with Northern Ireland, its well-being and position within the United Kingdom still two of my very strongest convictions.  I can't believe the row over the devolution of policing and justice powers is still going on.  After years of first enacting threats courtesy of an arsenal of guns and bombs, followed by making threats on the return of such weaponry unless their wishes were granted by the government, it must be hard for the followers of Sinn Fein/IRA to have to face a different scenario.  So what do they do?  They act like spoilt children by constantly threatening the end of the Stormont Assembly unless progress on the issue is expedited.  Tell you what, lads, go and bring the whole rotten edifice crashing to the ground.  There's few in the pro-Union community that will mourn its passing.

At the vanguard of Provo support is the ever-present Brian Feeney, whose earnings as a lecturer at St Mary's College coupled with the money he makes from being such a miserable, poisonous cretin in his role as a sometime 'journalist' proves, without a shadow of a doubt, that when it comes to the real meaning of 'justice' in the Northern Ireland context, there's precious little of it.  His latest offering to the Irish News once more makes the DUP the sole scapegoats for the stand-off.  Again, Nigel Dodds is referred to as 'Depooty Dawds' indicating that whilst Feeney has bigotry and hatred in spades, he has originality and humour in minute dribbles.  As for insinuating that the supporters of the TUV, such as myself and David, are somewhat lower than 'cave dwellers', at least we in our cosy caves can rest assured that we have never pledged support to any political movement that took the lives of thousands of innocent people.  That's a charge which Feeney, a true caveman now ensconced in his morally degenerative ivory tower, would have a hard time dodging.

At the centre of Feeney's so-called analysis is the paradox Irish nationalism always throws up an attempt to portray Unionists as uncompromising.  In one breath he says nationalists 'hold no brief for the north (sic)', yet in the next he states that Unionists are failing to provide the foundations on which nationalism can view Northern Ireland as a 'viable political entity'.  He knows full well that the nationalist minority in the Province has been treated with a degree of largesse by the British State in all sorts of ways that minorities in other countries (and I've been to enough to know) can only dream about.  Yet most show not the slightest inclination to make Northern Ireland stable and enduring.  In fact they vote in droves for the very party that for thirty years waged terrorism to bring it down, and now plays poker terrorism in the casino that is the Northern Ireland Executive.  Feeney knows any move to bring devolved justice would be pocketed by Sinn Fein as another move towards their mythical 'united Ireland', not as a step to include nationalism within the fabric of the Ulster polity, so why should Unionists show any accommodation?

In a different scenario the same is true of the SDLP.  Margaret Ritchie wants to reach out to Unionists in her bid for the party leadership.  Simultaneously she seeks to pursue the end of the Union, something which is guaranteed to create anger and mistrust between her party and the Unionist community.  For so long as the SDLP and others are hell-bent on destroying the Union, rather than carving out an Irish cultural niche within it, then for so long will you have stalemate, hatred, peace walls, mutual veto, Provo thumb-sucking, Executive instability and dissident terrorism.  Finally, let me remind Feeney and his entourage that there is no mention in the St Andrews Act of HM Government unilaterally forcing justice devolution in the absence of cross-community support.  Like the Belfast Agreement of 11 years ago, Irish nationalism should show a greater knowledge and awareness of the political and constitutional tenets of agreements they sign up to.

DO AS I SAY...

When he was a trade union boss, Clive Brooke was a keen advocate of financial moderation. In a report he wrote with church leaders, he said people must show ‘a generous spirit, and not pursue economic advantage to the limit’.

But then Clive Brooke became Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe – and began filling in his expense forms. Over the past seven years he has been claiming close to the maximum allowance in overnight subsistence payments despite owning a £700,000 townhouse just three miles from Parliament. The Labour peer has made the claims – totalling more than £140,000 in the accounts available – on the basis that his main residence is a house in Brighton on which he and his wife Lorna, 66, have no mortgage. Lord Brooke, 67, and his wife have owned their three-storey London home, in Battersea, a seven-minute drive from Parliament, for 23 years and are on the electoral roll there.

Lord Brooke - a good old Trade Unionist - is symptomatic of a new breed of parasite introduced by Blair. 

WEST BELFAST - LIVE AND DANGEROUS

Sad to report that there appears to be more street theatre of the pyrrhic kind in Belfast this evening, on the Falls Road. This follows on from that which happened the other evening in the city centre. Is this recreational vandalism? And what about the parents - some of the kids seemed very young the other evening - early teens.

 

THE LIBYAN CONNECTION....

It's really nauseating...

Lord Mandelson has infuriated families of the Lockerbie bombing victims by attending a shooting party with Colonel Gaddafi's son. 

The Business Secretary and Saif Gaddafi were guests of billionaire financier Lord Rothschild and his son Nat at the family mansion in Buckinghamshire. 

In a bizarre confirmation of Labour's close links to the Libyan regime, Cherie Blair was also present. 

The gathering came after the controversial release of Lockerbie bomber Abdelbaset al Megrahi, who was flown home by Saif Gaddafi to a hero's welcome in August. 

The NuLabour establishment and the Libyan thugocracy seem very cosy, don't they? Never mind the relatives of Pan Am Flight 103 -  no money is looking after them, is there?

When it comes to shooting, you sort of think that this should be what awaits Mandelson and his shooting buddies.....

IRISH ARMY TERRORISM?

Shocking to read that one of the men accused of trying to kill a police officer in County Fermanagh was a reserve soldier in the Irish Army.

Gerard James McManus, from Fern Hill in Letterkenny, County Donegal, appeared in court on Wednesday charged with attempting to murder a trainee officer. The 26-year-old was arrested after shots were fired during an undercover police operation in Garrison village. He was dismissed from the Irish Reserve on Tuesday.

Bit late for that. I trust there will be a rigorous investigation into how this alleged terrorist was allowed to serve in the Irish army. Are there any other republican terrorists in the Irish Army? I think we need to be told, don't you?

ATW FRIDAY JUKEBOX

Ok, so Friday night arrives and time for another spin of the jukebox...I was doing the title of this song just over a month ago! A dance gem from my favourite....

ANOTHER BROWN VICTORY

Last week, sections of the UK media were crowing that UK PM Gordon Brown had shrewdly seen off the attempt by France to grab the important Eurocrat position of internal market and financial services. If the French had won this, went the logic, the threat to the City of London would deepen. 

Well, Gordon has lost.

France has taken control of the EU's key internal market and financial services job after a last-minute lobbying offensive from Nicolas Sarkozy in what will be seen as a huge blow for Britain's Europe policy.

Michel Barnier, the French former foreign minister, was handed the full portfolio this morning despite intense British efforts to strip out financial services and give it to an economic liberal because of fears in the City of a new bout of regulation.

French diplomats had this week all but given up hope that Mr Sarkozy would achieve his ambition of taking control of the EU's financial services agenda but José Manuel Barroso, the European Commission President, finally caved in during discussions late last night.

And just do you know, Conservative leader David Cameron supported Barroso in his campaign to be be re-elected as EC President!

So, the onslaught on our financial services can now begin, with a vengeance. Good old Gordon. 

GRABBING AT STRAWS..

You ALMOST have to feel sorry for DUP Leader Peter Robinson. ALMOST.

DUP Leader Peter Robinson has called for immediate changes to the working of the Executive which could enable any three parties to make a decision. Currently both the DUP and Sinn Fein can block any initiative they oppose. In a speech to supporters in Foyle, he said the present system encouraged stalemate and "party political point-scoring over good government". Mr Robinson called for an "informal non-binding agreement" between the Executive parties.

Informal? Hmmm. Non-binding? Hmmm.

Sorry Peter but you are showing your hapless desperation here. Trying to beg Sinn Fein to give you a little window dressing in order to obscure the essential dysfunctionalism of the basis for government here is pathetic. There can be NO good government until mandatory power sharing is replaced by voluntary power sharing and terrorists are removed from government.

NO SHEEP, NO LEMMINGS...

Pleased to read that a former Conservative peer has been elected the new leader of the UK Independence Party. He was my choice and this is a good move by UKIP. 

Lord Pearson of Rannoch will take over from Nigel Farage, who has been in charge for three years, after polling 48% in a ballot of party members. He was granted a peerage by Margaret Thatcher in 1990 but had the Tory whip withdrawn in 2004 after suggesting voters should support Ukip in that year's elections. He is a strong supporter of freedom of speech and earlier this year invited the right-wing Dutch politician Geert Wilders to Britain to screen a controversial film about Islam.

In his acceptance speech today Lord Pearson said his ambition was to win enough support to force a hung Parliament in next year's general election. Ukip campaigns for Britain's withdrawal from the European Union. Lord Pearson said: "Ukip is not for sheep, Ukip is not for lemmings. Ukip is for people who think and act for themselves.

Explaining Sarah Palin

In America, over 200 years ago, an English-born Quaker staymaker anonymously penned and published a pamphlet titled Common Sense. This pamphlet was an immediate “bestseller” and was largely responsible for galvanizing the nascent revolutionary sentiments in the American colony, providing the will and rationale for the Revolutionary War and a complete break from England.   Written in blunt plain English, relying on simple reason and basic principle, Common Sense remains a powerful and persuasive document over 200 years later.

As Paine’s pamphlet resonated with American colonists in 1776, Sarah Palin resonates with Middle America 200 years later.  And, like Common Sense written by the anonymous Paine, Palin’s  basic attraction is not personal.

Palin’s  extraordinary popularity  derives  not from her considerable personal charisma and beauty, but from her simple appeal to the reason and principle of the ordinary man.  Palin speaks irrefutable common sense in plain English, the same common sense that  drives the Tea Party Movement, the Joe the Plumber phenomenon, and the backlash within the Republican Party against Washington DC insiders and media elites.

Palin represents an America that craves individual freedom and insists that government work for the people, not vice-versa.  Palin’s  America fought against George III’s England 200 years ago , and is now fighting against the Liberal Progressive Democrats and their encroaching socialism.  

“…government even in its best state is but a necessary evil; in its worst state an intolerable one; for when we suffer, or are exposed to the same miseries by a government, which we might expect in a country without government, our calamities is heightened by reflecting that we furnish the means by which we suffer.”  Thomas Paine, Common Sense

(Please note that I address herein Palin, the Phenomenon, not Palin's personal memoir, Going Rogue. Palin's recent bestseller is incidental to this post. )

COMMIE SYMBOLS TO BE OUTLAWED IN POLAND

Splendid, eh?

Up to two years in jail await anyone glorifying communism according to an amendment to Article 256 of the Polish criminal code — the race-hate article — which is likely to come into force next year. The ban outlaws “the production, distribution, sale or possession ... in print, recordings or other means of fascist, communist or other symbols of totalitarianism” [...]

The revised Bill has already passed the Polish Senate. President Kaczynski has to sign it into law by Monday and no one in Warsaw seriously believes that he will hesitate.

His twin brother, Jaroslaw Kaczynski, head of the opposition Law and Justice party, has made his view clear: “No symbol of communism has a right to exist in Poland because these are symbols of a genocidal system that should be compared to Nazism.”

Well, not quite so splendid because States shouldn't be in the business of outlawing free speech. However, the Poles know the true place of communism and that they put it on the same ideological and moral footing as Nazism certainly is splendid.

SHADOW BOXING...

Don't you love the pretend war between political allies DUP and IRA/Sin Fein?

A war of words has erupted between Sinn Fein and the DUP over the devolution of policing and justice to NI. DUP leader Peter Robinson has accused Sinn Fein of doing nothing to resolve outstanding issues.

However, Sinn Fein's Martin McGuinness rejected Mr Robinson's comments as "a fabrication".

He said the DUP were involved in game playing and said Sinn Fein were always ready to have discussions with Peter Robinson's party.

Mr McGuinness has again warned that if a date for devolution was not announced before Christmas it would be "a very serious situation".

Let us be clear, this is all aimed at placating public consumption and has nothing to do with what is really happening. The DUP and Sinn Fein/IRA are fully agreed on the need to take Policing and Justice away from the UK Parliament and place it in the hands of the toytown Assembly. The timing issue is awkward for the DUP who are in election mode and worried about the impact that devolving P&J will have on their electorate. I suspect they have every right to be concerned as time will tell.

WINNING THE EUROLOTTERY!

No, I haven't! If I had, I would be writing this under a foreign sun, I can assure you.

I refer to the news that European Union bureaucrats are to get an inflation busting and recession proof pay rise that is over three times the average rate for British workers hit by the economic slump. Even as the icy winds of economic recession blows across Europe, the Eurocrats reward themselves at our expense.

Baroness Ashton, the newly appointed EU foreign minister who is also a European Commission vice-president, will pocket an extra £9,000 on top of her basic annual salary of £241,000.

Eurocrats will get the 3.7 per cent pay rise despite negative or near to zero rates of inflation across Europe, soaring unemployment, falling wages and austerity measures in most national public sectors.

Despite never having been elected to public office, Lady Ashton will now earn over £52,000 more than Gordon Brown, the Prime Minister.

Unlike the Eurocrats, most British public sector workers, including front line doctors and nurses, are facing pay freezes as the government reins in public spending that has been bloated by bank bailouts.

EU officials, who already pay reduced taxes and who are currently demanding free travel on public transport, will get the pay increase, with six months paid retrospectively, in time to celebrate the New Year.

Isn't life grand when you're on the Euro-train? Is it any wonder that the endorsement of Lisbon brought so much good cheer? 

Let me tell you something. The EU is way beyond ANY prospect of reform. It is a corrupt anti-democratic malignancy that is reducing Nation States to parochail sub-offices. The unelected Eurocrats, like Ashton, personify just how grotesque it all is.  We should get OUT of it.