Labour Strangles The Arts; More Rope, More Lamposts, Please

The ridiculous new rules introduced by the Border Agency last year concerning visiting artists and academics from outside the UK are already having a disastrous effect.

Musicians, dancers, academics and artists are finding it too expensive, too difficult or just impossible to get visas to come to the UK to deliver concerts, workshops, talks or in the case of Chinese artist Huang Xu to attend the opening of his own exhibition.

The Manifesto Club have issued a report detailing the whole fiasco, with examples. They also have Facebook group.

The government no doubt think that these draconian rules will help prevent crime, though there's absolutely no evidence that visiting artists and academics have actually been involved in any criminal or terrorist activity.

The result of these restrictions will be to turn the UK into an artistic and cultural backwater and a laughing stock among other countries.

Rope and lampposts.

Jacqui Smith Jumps Sinking Ship

Jacqui Smith, the latest in a line of progressively disgraceful Home secretaries, has resigned. Before being pushed. Reaction in The Times.

Three cheers.

Now all we have to do is put up with the next jackass.

EU Lets Spanish Steal British Waters Round Gibraltar

This is the sort of thing that will eventually cause conflict in the EU: Spain uses EU 'environmental protection' guise to seize control of British waters.

Political Swamp Death Nemesis Awaits Spawn

Forgive the obscure literary reference there, but...this morning I caught a snippet of an interview on the radio; somebody talking to the Spawn Himself.

When asked if there were any situation in which he would stand down before the election, he replied no (of course), because: "I'm going to get on with the job I set myself".

These are the words of a man of colossal delusion and arrogance. He seems to think he's the only person able to improve the economy, even though he's one of those most guilty of driving it down shitter in the first place.

He seems to think that he has the moral authority to continue as Prime Minister even when his government is collapsing daily deeper into ineptitude, corruption and chaos.

He seems to think that he's in the position of Prime Minister to carry out his own plans - not those of the electorate. He forgets that it is the electorate who decide who should govern. There again, he's not really that used to democracy - he avoids the judgement of the ballot box as much as he can.

Nemesis draws closer day by day, whatever blocks, delays and prevarications he employs. In terms of a political death this could be the most humiliating and pathetic we are likely to witness; far worse than that of Major and the sleazbags of the last Tory administration; far worse than Eden after Suez.

Except, I suspect, there will be little sympathy for Brown when he finally drowns in the swamp of his own making.

French Commissar Says La Democratie? Je m'en Fous

Segolene Royal makes a plea for a 'United States of Europe' in the face of media indifference.

Segolene Royal, the losing socialist candidate at the last French elections, reckons what we need is closer political union - whether the people want it or not. At a meeting in Reze she said

"the time has come to form a United States of Europe... don't listen to those who say you have no mandate to do this: the delegates of the general States didn't have the mandate to make their declaration on the Rights of Man, and yet they went ahead and did so...We want more of Europe, we want a bigger Europe...you must create a united Europe, a united Europe of the peoples of Europe...

The alternative, she said, was simple:

either Europe marches on to political unity or it falls apart into nationalism...and nationalism, as Mitterand said, is war.

These politicians are so intoxicated by their own delusions of self-importance they fail to see that an enforced union, accomplished with or without the full knowledge and permission of the people, will end up causing the very nationalistic conflicts they think they are relegating to history.

So there you have it again: the political class decide what we should have and intend to give it to us even when we reject it. And when it all falls apart in strife and unrest, they'll blame us.