No fries with that

Ok this may look a bit like an advertorial but I was rather pleased to see this story in today’s Oz. My pleasure is of course due to the fact that one of my best friends  has Subway franchise which gives me a small insight into the way that they do business.

Regular customer Susan Rogers places her order at a Subway franchise on Oxford Street in the inner-Sydney suburb of Darlinghurst yesterday. Picture: Alan Pryke. Source: The Australian

Since Subway opened its first store in Perth in 1988, the franchise has grown to about 1260 stores in Australia, exceeding the number of McDonald’s stores by about 430 and more than double that of KFC. “We are very happy with the way things have gone,” said Subway Australia-New Zealand regional director Brian Tap. “We’ve got a very good product and a strong value message out there and consumers have reacted positively.”

Outside of the US, Mr Tap said Australia was Subway’s biggest market based on store numbers, serving more than 1.5 million customers a week.

One of those is Susan Rogers from North Sydney. A regular for the past five years, Ms Rogers said she liked it because “it’s a healthy option, it fills you up and it’s a good price when you compare it to what else is out there”.

I have a reputation for defending Macca’s and I don’t retreat  from any thing that I have said about that fast food chain but its clear to me that Subway are like their bread on the rise and Maccas is effectively just treading water these days. Probably because it  sells a more “healthy” product. As far as I can tell the businesses that rise up the ramparts of success are those that tap into the times they operate in. McDonalds built their market share in a time when what mattered was calories per dollar. They  developed a market model that worked but now we are much more conscious of the fact that we should not eat lots of fat or sugar so the maker of a more “healthy ” product is bound to succeed. The good thing for those who still enjoy a burger is that the likes of McDonalds are now offering some better (healthier ) products in their menu as a response to the rise of Subway that is a win win situation.

Over all I think that the rise of Subway and the the influence that it has had on the the fast food market in general shows that capitalism can work and it can adapt to the needs of a society by a process of  innovation and evolution.

Cheers Comrades

Throwing Julia a lifeline?????

Leon’s excellent analysis of  Gillard’s folly and fall from grace with the voting public  made my morning. He has succinctly described why Labor support  has plummeted in the polls. How ever I heard a little report on the ABC this morning which may well get those of us who see the bigger picture  thinking that Tony Windsor is  about to throw Julia Gillard a lifeline:

Independent MP Tony Windsor says an advertising campaign would be the wrong move (Getty Images: Cole Bennetts, file photo)

Independent MP Tony Windsor has labelled the Federal Government’s carbon tax strategy a mistake and warned that a taxpayer-funded advertising campaign will only make things worse.

In a blunt warning to the Government, Mr Windsor accuses it of making strategic mistakes in the timing of the tax announcement, “putting the cart before the horse” because of “pressure from the Greens”, and says a key reason Australians appear to have baulked at the plan is because it is too vague.

And he warns the Government not to take his support for the tax for granted, saying there is not enough information for him to make an informed decision.

His comments came after Tuesday’s Newspoll showed Labor’s support hitting an all-time low, Prime Minister Julia Gillard’s popularity taking a thumping, and a clear majority against putting a price on carbon.

The ABC has been told there is a $30 million pool of funds for advertising that was never spent because of the demise of Kevin Rudd’s carbon pollution reduction scheme, and Ms Gillard has not ruled out an ad campaign to try to sell the carbon tax.

Mr Windsor says an advertising campaign in support of a carbon price which has not even been set yet would be the wrong move.

“I think it would make it worse,” Mr Windsor told ABC’s Lateline.

In essence this move by Windsor means that Julia can  have a means of stepping back from the folly of this carbon tax designed by the loopy Greens that is causing her all of the pain in polls, without having to openly oppose it. All she will have to do is say I can’t possibly get it through the reps without Tony Windsor so I can let it die or at least postpone it until after the next election. She can use the fact that that she is in a minority government to placate the Greens who will be rather cross that a different tail is wagging what they consider to be their dog.

It is a very sweet scenario that may just allow her to walk away from the train wreck that she has made here but the big question remains will she improve the standing of her government or will the long knives still be rubbing on the sharpening stones in the Caucus back-rooms?

Cheers Comrades

Has Julia Gillard committed political suicide?

 

Gillard's decisison to introduce a carbon tax was brave, but it could cost her the Prime Ministership.

 

“There will be no carbon tax under the government I lead” declared Julia Gillard shortly before the last federal election, that saw Labor cling to office after cobbling together an unlikely alliance with a Green, a former Green and two rural independents. 

Like Kevin Rudd’s 2007 commitment to being an “economic conservative”, this declaration was aimed at reassuring the voters and heading off a scare campaign by the Coalition. And like Rudd’s pledge, Gillard’s promise has turned out to be quite untrue. 

I’m sure Tony Abbott can hardly believe his luck. As well as being able to call the Prime Minister a liar, he can also run the “great big new tax on everything” line which frightened Rudd and resulted in the government ditching its Emissions Trading Scheme before the 2010 election. 

As question time last week showed, Abbott, a former pugilist, is going to be an even more ferocious Opposition Leader than usual, continually looking to knock the government out by throwing vicious uppercuts and big overhand rights. 

The stakes could not be higher for Gillard as the real question is whether her leadership can survive. Since Labor disposed of Kevin Rudd’s Prime Ministership last year it is certain that if the tax is confirmed as a serious electoral liability, Gillard’s leadership will be similarly terminated as part of a radical about-face for the government.   

The newspoll figures just released confirm that Labor is in trouble as a result of the carbon price plan, with most voters opposed and Labor’s scores in the primary vote and two party-preferred slipping badly. There is little doubt that winning over the public’s acceptance will be an uphill struggle. 

Some have compared Gillard’s carbon tax to the GST, but the Howard Government gave the people the chance to vote on its GST proposal at the 1998 election. The better comparison is with Workchoices, as pointed out by Peter van Onselen. But even with Workchoices, the Coalition at least did not specifically promise not to bring it in. The circumstances in which Gillard has introduced her carbon tax no doubt aggravate the anger and betrayal felt by some voters. 

It is probable that Gillard’s decision to introduce a carbon tax reflects the desire within the ALP to increase its primary vote, which has hovered to low levels for over a year. But the Greens are determined to take the credit for the carbon tax, with Christine Milne claiming that it would not have occurred but for the Greens. 

It would therefore appear that Gillard’s move has only helped the Greens, with supporters of a carbon tax only more likely to continue voting for the minority party because of its success in achieving a price on carbon.       

Meanwhile, the details of the scheme are yet to be worked out, and the Prime Minister must be hoping that enough people study the details once they are released, so that they understand how they will be affected and are no longer so angry or afraid. But the softer the scheme is, the less likely the Greens are to support it, and there’s no way the tax can be passed without the support of the Greens. In that event, Labor will look like having stuffed up again, by announcing something without being able to implement it. And voters with long memories will remember the broken promise, resulting in Gillard’s esteem within the electorate continuing to be eroded. 

Gillard’s about-face on the carbon tax reflects the differences between the ALP’s main supporters: the suburban working and middle classes on the one hand and the inner-city progressives on the other. It was the former that Gillard was pitching to before the election, with her carbon promise, her supposed opposition to gay marriage and support for border security. Post-election and governing with the support of the Greens, Gillard has now committed herself to a carbon tax and was willing to accommodate the Green’s aim to allow the territories to legalise gay marriage and euthanasia in a dramatic shift to the left. 

Late last year, Michael Costa argued that Gillard’s cosying-up to the Greens and the left agenda was a mistake. In typically blunt terms, Costa wrote that: 

Labor will never be able to match the Greens in a rhetorical battle on so-called social justice. The Greens, with their pathological antipathy to capitalism and inherent contempt for the principles of sound public finance, will always claim that more and more are in need, and more should be done. With their mantra that things would be much better if Labor just stopped selling out to the capitalist system and its vested interests, the Greens will always try to wedge Labor.

Labor cannot win a war with the Greens if it is framed in these terms. Labor must reframe the debate to focus on the destructive social and economic consequences of Greens policies. The Greens need to be confronted rather than appeased. This is precisely why federal Labor’s political deal with the Greens is so damaging. Gillard and her advisers have, by formalising a political agreement with the Greens, unnecessarily and irresponsibly legitimised them in the eyes of many ill-informed voters as a credible political force.

Most traditional Labor voters are not supporters of the Greens’ policies. The Greens’ policies on a range of issue, from taxation to law and order, would horrify that base. In short, Gillard has made a damaging political blunder that will haunt the party for many years to come.

Given that the Greens are taking all the credit and Labor all the punishment for the Government’s embrace of parts of the Greens agenda, Costa would appear to be correct.

One has to wonder why Gillard has compromised so much with the Greens. Being to the left of the Labor party, the Greens were always going to support Labor in government over the Coalition. And if the Greens proved too obstructive they would be risk being later blamed for forcing Labor to an early election and helping install the Coalition in office, thereby strengthening claims that they are an irresponsible party. A campaign in the seats like the seat of Melbourne along the lines of “a vote for the Greens is a vote for the Liberal Party” would potentially be of devastating effect in terms of turning some Green voters back into Labor voters.

In any event, it’s not as though there is any merit in a carbon tax right now anyway. Post-Copenhagen, it is clear that the world cannot agree to any concerted action on climate change, and nothing that Australia does can possibly make any difference to the climate given that we only responsible for a little over 1% of the world’s emissions. Also, global temperatures have been remarkably continuous over the last decade, indicating that climate change action is not as urgent as some alarmists would have it.

Meanwhile, the tax will drive up energy prices, harm the economy and cost jobs. This is by definition a useless tax, that will harm Australia’s interests and have at best a negligible environmental benefit.   

Gillard may believe she is being politically astute by pandering to the Greens, but the inconsistency between her position now and her position before the election is clear. Similarly, Rudd’s popularity slipped once he deferred his ETS plans, when he previously claimed that climate change “is the great moral issue of our times” and that “delay is denial”. It is probably the inconsistency, which exposed Rudd as a politician lacking in courage and conviction, which discredited him so badly. Gillard has also changed position on climate change many times.

Gillard may feel that her Government needs to embrace a big cause in order for it to stop languishing and stand for something. But it appears she has chosen the wrong issue. Why not instead re-visit the Henry Review and implement more of its recommendations, in what will help strengthen rather than weaken the economy?

If this carbon tax is the demise of Julia Gillard, then the issue of climate change will have destroyed the leaderships of Malcolm Turnbull, Rudd and Gillard. That reflects that it is a potent and polarising issue, as well as the fact that it has been badly mishandled a few times.

Whilst Rudd was too strong in his rhetoric and then wimped out when his cause became less politically popular, Gillard promised before the election to not do what she is now doing. And that could well prove to be her undoing.

"Privilege" had nothing to do with it.

The privileges the right-wingers insist I deserved

On this week’s Pure Poison Podcast we had a bit of a vigorous debate on the subject of school funding. (Well, “vigorous debate” – Dave expressed an opinion and then I ranted a bit in response. ANYWAY.)

I listened to Our learned friend’s ranty rant about private education and I was struck by just how ill informed and stupid his argument was . In essence he was suggesting that if every high school student had more money thrown at then then they would all get top marks and then societal privilege would be gone for ever! The shallowness of this argument is staggering! It is comedy gold if the truth be known!

And there was a point raised that I think deserves an airing on this blog as well.

The old saying that when you are in a deep dark hole with a silly argument stop digging comes to mind here.

That point is this: those advocating for the privilege of private school kids are advocating for people like Jeremy Sear to receive extra, unearned advantages over other, perhaps more talented and more deserving kids.

Just what are the “advantages” when it comes down to it my learned friend? Is it the better work ethic? Incentiveised by the fact that one’s parents may be paying a motza for your tuition? Or is it having pretty buildings and fancy uniforms? Because when you get down to the nitty gritty of  entrance requirements to our universities there is no deciding parameter other than your TE  score, it does not matter a jot what school you come form if you get the marks then you get your choice of Uni its as simple as that.

See, as has been pointed out before by those who like to personalise every argument (as if it made me some kind of hypocrite), I attended a first-rate private school, Melbourne Grammar. My parents scrimped and saved and took on extra jobs and worked bloody hard to send me there. And, in an environment where the vast majority of my fellow schoolmates were destined for University and the Professions, I then attended Melbourne University as a law student and am, today, fortunate enough to practise law as a barrister – a profession filled with other alumni of my former school.

The sad fact that our learned friend seems to struggle with is that not every young person has the ability or the desire to have a tertiary education, some are destined to do further study and to seek a place in “the professions” but most are either not interested or lack the abilities to do such jobs. I think that the sort of life that people aspire to is much more dependant upon their parental examples than the school that they attend. Thus if we were to do a survey of the parents of Melbourne Grammar students I bet that you would find a very high number of people in “the professions” as Jezza puts it. those Melbourne Grammar children naturally model them selves on their parents and the result is that a larger proportion join “the professions”

Would I have achieved this had I been at the local high school? Who knows. (Obviously I worked hard enough to get first-class VCE results; even the most expensive private school can’t actually provide those for you.) The point is, clearly my parents – and all those other parents stumping up what I understand now are yearly fees well into five figures – felt and feel that they were getting value for money, that I was receiving a quality of education I would not have received in the public system. Maybe it was the extra facilities and services – I suspect the local high school didn’t have a thriving music program and several orchestras. I suspect it didn’t have a boat-shed on the Yarra down by Princes Bridge filled with rowing sculls. Maybe it was the quality of teachers, being higher-paid than those at the public schools. Maybe it was being surrounded by other students from privileged backgrounds destined for the better remunerated professions.

It has always been the duty of every parents to teach their children the skills that they would need to succeed in life and to be frank I would love it to be the case that every school had fine music programs and fancy sporting facilities, heck I would wish that they also had the same sort of expectations of their students that would drive their pupils to achieve better academic results  but none of those “privileges” matter as much as parental example and  expectations.

The point is, whatever those advantages – I had done nothing to deserve them. And yet I enjoyed them, and then competed for University places and jobs with those who had not.

Our learned friend has already conceded above that what got him his place at university was his excellent academic results “(Obviously I worked hard enough to get first-class VCE results; even the most expensive private school can’t actually provide those for you.)” All of the other things that he feels so guilty about mean nothing when it gets down to the entrance  requirements for university.  And isn’t that the important thing? There are no university minions looking at where any particular student went to high school and saying”Oh he went to Melbourne Grammar we will give him a place  ahead of the boy from Bogan State High who got a better TE score because he must be a better class of student… Selection is based upon academic merit , just as it should be.

Those advocating for the private school system are calling for more Jeremy Sears to receive privileges in their basic education that they’ve done nothing to deserve. Just think about it. Right now, there are future Jeremy Sears – kids who’ve received every privilege their parents could bestow, but who could nevertheless discover a social conscience at University and become, ugh, lefties – just waiting to take the places at University of other, perhaps more deserving children. Future Jeremy Sears who’ll use their private school education to campaign for, say, The Greens. Future Jeremy Sears who’ll get whatever high-paying jobs you despise arguing whatever other things it is you despise, leveraging their privilege in who knows what ways to annoy you.

Does this sound like a guilt chip in overload to you comrades? It does to me  the reality is that the “privileges “that so vex our learned friend are illusory at best and that when it comes down to it Jezza  just can’t get his head around the simple  fact that not every son or daughter of a tradie or even a manual labourer wants to join the “professions” they may be entirely content to get a job like their parents have or just to live their lives as one long party. Now some of them may well want to join the ranks of our learned friend at the legal bar (rather than the back bar with their mates ) and if that is their desire then all they have to do is study hard and they can do the necessary Uni courses (without having to find the cash up front to pay for it) and they too can be come a barrister. What matters more than a “private ” or a “public” education is the desire and ability  to succeed and that comes form their parents and upbringing.

And all because we had a system where the lucky bastards got a fundamental leg-up over everybody else’s kids at the very beginning, just because of their parents.

Why do right-wingers want to help the Jeremy Sears of this world so much?

Well I suppose that a world with out Jeremy Sears would be rather dull place with nothing to laugh at But seriously I would just love for our learned friend to demonstrate just how his going to Melbourne Grammar actually made his entrance into University and his profession  easier because the reality is (as he concedes himself ) he got into law on his academic merits.  “Privilege”had nothing to do with it.

Finally I want to make a simple suggestion to guilt riven silvertails like our learned friend. Just what would you have thought of your parents had they spent the cost of your private education on say buying flash cars home improvements  and indulgent overseas holidays? Or even just lots of parties? Wouldn’t you think that they were being bad parents? Maybe one day our  learned friend will realise that education of our children is primarily a parental responsibility rather than being the role of the state. Maybe then he will be able to let go of his guilt about having parents who could send him to the “best” schools.

Cheers Comrades

Does the media pick the chubby loonies or are political cycle activists all fat?

BRACING RIDE: Nudists bike their way down Exhibition St in Melbourne CBD. Be warned, Brisbane - they're on their way. Picture: Darren McNamara Source: The Courier-Mail

As far as I understand it the point of this sort of “protest” is to make it clear just how vulnerable cyclists are to injury when they mix it with the traffic on the streets of our cities. The thing is, doing this sort of thing once may have some novelty value and may make the desired point but repeating the nude ride every year it has absolutely no value in making their point. All it does is give the exhibitionists  among the latte sipping set an opportunity to wave their danglely  bits at the general public. Frankly if you are going to do this sort of protest can you at least try to make sure that the ‘activists” who become the “face” of your message are at least reasonably good looking ?

On the strength of the public image presented by the people in this photo  I reckon that there is no better course of action than making Nudie rides by ugly people a capital offence, with the sentence to be carried out immediately,  with extreme prejudice…

Cheers Comrades

Bryce's blooms

BLOOMIN' BUDGET-CONSCIOUS: Quentin Bryce's office is now spending a quarter less on flowers. Source: The Sunday Mail (Qld)

I have absolutely no problem with the Governor General  representing Australia overseas but it does strike me that a flower budget of $800 a week is by any measure OTT!

Her international travel continues at a cracking pace though, with a three-day visit to France last year costing $108,190.

The visit, from July 18 to 20, included a transport bill of $89,448 and accommodation and meals costing $16,304.

Since November 2008, the Governor-General’s office has spent more than $545,000 on Ms Bryce’s international travel representing Australia.

Documents obtained under Freedom of Information laws reveal the Governor-General’s office spent $109,000 on fragrant blooms between September 2008 and January 31 this year.

“Expenditure on flowers has been cut by over 25 per cent (from 2008-09) to a current average of around $400 per week, per property,” Deputy Official Secretary to the Governor-General Mark Fraser said.

“Flowers used throughout both properties to support official functions are sourced from the gardens and grounds and through external suppliers.”

But her office boasts of a frugal approach to wining and dining, noting that “since the Governor-General took office, wine purchased has been less than $20 per head”.

GLOBETROTTING Governor-General Quentin Bryce has slashed spending on flowers at her official residences to $800 a week.

How can this be justified when a can of air fresahener is only a couple of bucks?

I have to wonder if previous male GGs have spent as much on flowers though….

Cheers Comrades

For Comrade Craigy

This is a post for Craigy in particular because only last week he cited the very document that JF Beck so eloquently debunks in the post that I include below as a screenshot . Now I have no doubt that JF won’t mind me making this point by republishing his post which can be found here for those who want to check its links .

And your response is ????

Cheers Comrade

Retro rush……………

a ‘Pendalpine’ built in 2008 and based on the 1926 SS100.

Every thing old is new again….

Tally ho Pip Pip Comrades!!!

Abandon hope all that go through this gate

So many of our pals from the left think that wikileaks is like some whiff of fresh air and the bringer of a new era of political truth. To them the traitor who originally stole the information is some sort of hero. and they are full of contrived rancour that the US government should bring charges against Bradley Manning that carry a capital sanction.

They want to suggest that Manning is some sort of martyr for the cause of truth rather than being a deluded fool who betrayed  his country. The thing is that as I see it if the revelations are really in the public interest as our learned friend would have you believe why was so much information actually stolen it the first place? Because there is no doubt that the majority of that information is of no consequence, you know all the stuff that says  that this country’s leader has horrible fashion sense of smelly farts, only a very small part of the file dump that is wikileaks is what might be called “sensitive” or meaningful. So I’m going to suggest that rather than stealing the information because of some great moral or ethical principle, Manning  stole the information   because he could.

There is no doubt that the law broken by Bradley has a very long history and it has also always carried a capital sanction. Further as a serving member of the US military Bradley swore an oath of loyalty  that the release of those documents disavows. No country can afford to treat treason in a time of war lightly because no military will continue to function well without the carrot of patriotism and a stick of the most serious sanction to  the traitor.

In any event reports suggest that prosecutors will not actually be seeking the death penalty … even though it is actually deserved here.

Cheers Comrades

My school 2.0

Collectively we all want to see the children of this country get the the best possible education and there is no issue more likely to wind up the Latte sippers more than the amount of government money that is given to the private schools in this country. I find it rather amusing when a particular subset of the species lattus Sippicus whine about this topic because this subset have themselves had  expensive  private schooling:

(click for link)

Well I heard about the new web creature created by the Labor Government “My school 2.0″ was being touted by Peter Garrett on the radio yesterday and it is due to go live today. Looking at the graph in the SMH piece I cite today though you would have to conclude that the private schools do a fine job of saving the taxpayer money. Because it seems pretty obvious to anyone with a brain and the ability to add up that were the monies paid by government to subsidise private schools withdrawn then the private schools would collapse and then those students would collapse the public schools by the sheer weight of their numbers.

If we take the view that providing an education for the children of Australia is a duty of government then it is clear that the government is making substantial savings when ordinary parents decide that they are going to did deep and pay to go private.
To be honest I am rather unsure if it is good value for a parent to pay for a private school education for their children but then again isn’t it our duty as parents to seek the best possible start in life for our children? But one thing I am rather more sure about is that the knowing more about the relive merits of the various schools that we as parents may choose for our progeny is a good idea in principle but I just can’t shake the feeling that as a product of the Labor government there has to be a catch or some lurking fly in the ointment that will lead to a big festering sore in no time flat.

Cheers Comrades

Disclaimer

I have two children who are both students at a Queensland public school but the possibility of sending them to a private school in the future is not entirely out of the question.

Testing you tube embed

Hope this works

Cheers Comrades

The Labor dog finally to resist the wagging effort from the Greens tail

But if your political dog is being wagged by its tail, docking may actually be a very good idea...

It was very nicer to read in the OZ this morning that the federal back bench of the Labor party is finally realising that Joolia  letting the Greens set their agenda on the government is not such a good idea. Frankly it is a very good way to both loose uberleft voters to the Greens (why vote for the wagged when you can vote for the wagger?) and a good way to lose their traditional supporters (why vote for the wagged when you can vote the party that will stand up for ordinary Aussies?).

Those Labor  members on the back benches have the most to lose should the bill proposed by Brown  get up. No that is not quite correct, the terminally ill have the most to lose because were this bill to get up it would be an express lane to legalising euthanasia and Gay marriage. The former is of course something that can so easily be the subject of abuse by those who stand to gain by the demise of a terminally ill person* and the latter is simply window dressing for a Gay agenda to remould the wider community in the shape of the gay subculture. (how long will it be before this type of trousers become part of school uniforms ?   )

The ALP members are  realising that they may need the Greens to hold office now but if they want to dock that annoying tail after the next election then they had better make sure that they still have a viable dog in the mean time.

Cheers Comrades

*isn’t it amazing that those who are so “for” euthanasia are so often anti-capital punishment?

Critical mass casualties as motorist goes bonkers at protest

I personally love the way that a civil society will allow  and even encourage the expression of the public will by way of peaceful protest, However there is no getting away from the fact that. there are some types of protest that only ever succeed in pissing people off enough that they may do something stupid:

Click for video

Hmm what is really stupid is that this chap was unable to make  a single fatalalty dispite injuring 40 loonies…*

But to be realistic when these sorts of “protests” have been held here or in Europe there has been only annoyance and dare I suggest it the desire to do what the Golf  driver does in the vid. But don’t “critical mass” realise that there is a fine line between making your point and doing more harm than good for the promotion of bicycles ?

Hmm maybe they don’t ….

Cheers Comrades

* cue my humorless critics insisting that I am advocating that cyclists should be run down  and killed if they get in the way of car drivers….

Just maiming them is adequate

As things go from bad to worse in Libya…

It is very easy to make jokes about Gaddafi, just as I did in the title of my previous post and to be honest I have been rather surprised by just how quickly the Arab dictatorships have been subject to what can only be described as popular revolts. I have been saddened by the loss of life and the misery we have seen as people flee. but I have also been surprised by just how many  “guest workers” have been keeping the economies of a country like Libya going (rather than the country developing employment for its own people).

However I did find what Nick Cohen has to say about the seduction of the left by the likes of Gaddafi and  the rather successful use of the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians  to distract from the more wide spread tyranny rings true:

In his Epitaph on a Tyrant, Auden wrote:

“When he laughed, respectable senators burst with laughter And when he cried, the little children died in the streets.”

Europe’s amnesia about how tyranny operated in our continent explains why the Libyan revolution is embarrassing a rich collection of dupes and scoundrels who were willing to laugh along with Gaddafi. His contacts in Britain were once confined to the truly lunatic fringe. He supplied arms to the IRA, funded the Workers’ Revolutionary Party, Vanessa Redgrave’s nasty Trotskyist sect, and entertained Nick Griffin and other neo-Nazis. We should not forget them when the time comes to settle accounts. But when Tony Blair, who was so eloquent in denouncing the genocides of Saddam, staged a reconciliation with Gaddafi after 9/11, his friendship opened the way for the British establishment to embrace the dictatorship.

It was not only BP and other oil companies, but British academics who were happy to accept his largesse. The London School of Economics took £1.5m from Saif al-Islam Gaddafi, money which by definition had to have been stolen from the Libyan people, despite being warned to back away by Professor Fred Halliday, the LSE’s late and much-missed authority on the Middle East, who never flinched from looking dictators in the eye.

“I’ve come to know Saif as someone who looks to democracy, civil society and deep liberal values for the core of his inspiration,” purred the LSE’s David Held as he accepted the cheque. Human Rights Watch, once a reliable opponent of tyranny, went further and described a foundation Saif ran in Libya as a force for freedom, willing to take on the interior ministry in the fight for civil liberties. Meanwhile, and to the surprise of no one, Peter Mandelson, New Labour’s butterfly, fluttered round Saif at the country house parties of the plutocracy.

Last week, Saif, the “liberal” promoter of human rights and dining companion of Mandelson, appeared on Libyan television to say that his father’s gunmen would fight to the last bullet to keep the Gaddafi crime family in business, a promise he is keeping. The thinking behind so many who flattered him was that the only issue in the Middle East worth taking a stand on was the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and that the oppression of Arabs by Arabs was a minor concern.

Isn’t it always the way that when change comes that the minions of the left claim some sort of proprietary rights over the result? Even though they were every so happy to accept the largess of the likes of Gaddafi and help those of his ilk play the Palestinian card.

I can’t help wondering what our friends from the left will say to those who are suggesting  that the west should impose a” no fly zone” or that they should risk lives and treasure to support the revolts? Will they advocate action or will they hold up the experience in Iraq as reason for inaction?

Of course you have to ask yourself just who will buy their lattes when Gaddafi and the others  finally fall?
….

Cheers Comrades