House prices are soaring again in London. It’s not surprising when you add the large inflow of new people to the slow rate of new construction and the ever more

The French Presidential election wallows on. The main centre right candidate swaggers as the next President because the polls show he has almost 30% support! The leading centre left candidate, Segolene Royal has the support of fewer than one in four of the voters, and the coming from nowhere centrist Francois Bayrou is stuck on 1 in 5.

The election is played under a type of PR so of course in the first round it encourages candidates and parties to go to extremes. Some left of centre voters are attracted to the Workers Struggle or

The sad news of a suicide bomber killing Iraqis who are trying to made their democracy work underlines the extent of the crisis in Baghdad. The US troop surge was unable to make any difference. The elaborate security precautions around rhe Green Zone and the Parliament building on this occasion failed.

Democratic societies should be relatively open societies. They are always vulnerable to those who see the jaw jaw of democracy as weak or feeble. Their strength comes from winning over most of the people most of the time to believe in the system, so that those who want to blow it up or damage it have nowhere to hide and no friends to help. There is still insufficient consent to the legitimate power of elected government in Iraq. The US troops in Baghdad are unable to solve that fundamental problem.

David Milliband is beginning to look silly saying he thinks Gordon Brown will make a good Prime Minister, in a way which does not rule out his own candidature once Tony Blair resigns.

It is not easy keeping open options in

The US has announced longer tours of duty for its troops in Iraq, as the surge becomes a long slog by more soldiers from an overstretched military. Meanwhile, the bombings continue in Baghdad.

Fighting a war against terrorists in some ways glorifies them. Terrorists in a democracy are criminals. The fact that they use violence to pursue political ends rather than to take your property doesn’t alter the point that they are murderers, committing crimes of violence. They may also be breaking other laws, frequently coming by the money to pay for their violent crimes by illegal means, and often dealing in illegal weapons at the same time. In a democracy everyone has legal means to influence or change the government.

The way to tackle terrorism has to be intelligence led. Because they blend in with a local community of non terrorists, bombing from the air cannot be used, and military intervention on the ground is dangerous, threatening residents who are not part of the terrorist activity, unless the intelligence is very good and the military action surgical. Terrorists want to be treated differently from other violent criminals, so they can be treated differently by the local community. They seek to put them under an obligation to shelter them or to condone their activities.

Terrorism can best be tackled where the civilian power trying to control the wave of violence has the support of most people to find and prosecute the offenders. The civilian power may well need to call on military support when it has tracked down malefactors, as they may well try to fight their way out of arrest or trouble. If the military power it calls on comes from a foreign country it will be easier for the terrorist groups to persuade the civilian community not to assist the police operation. If the terrorist groups are strong and numerous then they may well also intimidate the local community into harbouring them. It will be a long task seeking to build up a group of people who will provide evidence, and important to give them proper protection when they do help the authorities.

The terrorists’ task will also be made more difficult if the civilian authority can show its democratic mandate will offer a way

Today’s Social Trends publication reveals just how many people now live on their own, and how many live with another but do not marry.

Some books and commentators claimed there were 12 stars on the flag because there used to be 12 member states. Several enlargements later that view can no longer prevail.

The current common explanation of the

In his 1989 book Gordon Brown wrote of his worries for the 1990s:

“One sad prediction is that one worker in eight will emigrate from the north-west. Nearly three-quarters of a million immigrants are expected to arrive in the already congested south. The demands placed on infrastructure in the south scarcely bear contemplation…”

I wonder how he feels now about the state of the infrastructure and the numbers of migrants?

We now have Adam Smith on the banknotes, and have heard Gordon Brown praise his fellow countryman as a great economist. I agree.

Strange then, that in his book of 1989 Gordon Brown wrote

In 1989 Gordon Brown wrote a book condemning the UK’s economic and social record..

His main complaints were:

1. Too large a balance of payments deficit

2. Too little progress in manufacturing

3. A decline in scientific education and industry

4. Faster growth in the south than the rest of the UK

5. Too many people out of work and on benefits

After 10 years of Gordon Brown as Chancellor we have

1. A bigger balance of payments deficit

2. 1 million fewer manufacturing jobs, with many firms taking their factories abroad

3.

If you sign up for the forces - or for that matter become a Minister of the Crown - you accept that everything you do in your day job and in your official capacity is the property of the state paying your wages.

If you do something that is newsworthy you follow orders. You discuss it with your employer. You and your employer together decide if it is appropriate to hold a press conference or issue a statement. You discuss how to respond to the press interest. Because you are working for your country

Labour’s defence of the sale of the stories of mariners released from Iran plumbs a new low in the long and dispiriting history of Labour spin.

We are told that these mariners are “instant celebrities”. It would be wrong to stop them selling their story. It would be impractical to do so. Their friends and loved ones could sell the story

On Easter Sunday Churches around the country celebrate the Resurrection, bishops and vicars lead prayers for a new spirit of peace and rebirth, whilst secular newspapers pick over the ruins of Tony Blair’s Middle Eastern strategy.

Yesterday I attended the Churches of Wokingham together act of public witness for Good Friday.

We started with a short service in the Methodist Church, walked to the Market Place with the cross, spent an hour hearing the four gospels and singing hymns, and then walked to one of the Anglican Churches for a short concluding service.

About 250 people came out of a town population of some 30,000. The Bishop of Reading joined us, and carried the cross on the second leg of its journey.

The government’s decision to introduce lie detectors to tackle benefit cheats, and its new Big Brother surveillance centres to shout at people out on the streets could have been good April fool’s stories, but unfortunately are true.

Faced with a failure to act through normal policing, intelligence and prosecution of offenders, the government turns once again to spending more of our money in the hope that there is an easy technological answer to deep seated behavioural problems.

John Reid thought it was a good photo opportunity for him to be pictured against the backdrop of a camera monitoring centre, where a man in shirt sleeves was able to bellow commentary out of a street speaker to someone not using the litter bin properly.

Ruth Kelly and David Milliband seem happy that we now live in a world where Councils can put cameras in our dustbins to

I have kept my silence over the hostages in Iran whilst our sailors were still at risk, as has the Conservative party generally. As it seemed likely the government was going to use diplomatic means to seek to get them back it was vital that the Uk looked united, and that there were as few noises off as possible.

Now they are all safely on a BA flight to London we need to begin the inquiry into how it happened and how the government responded. The UK has been made to look weak and directionless in the crisis. 15 of our armed forces have been used as pawns in one of the most cynical propoganda manoeuvres we have seen for a long time. The world has been treated to endless pictures of British sailors apologising to the Iranian state and admitting guilt when the official government position has been that they were doing their duty for the United Nations and were seized illegally.

One evening when I was briefing a journalist on the dangers of European government, he interrupted me to ask if I talked a lot to Gordon Brown about these things. I told him that I didn’t. He said he asked, because he thought many of my critcisms of the EU and its intervention in our affairs were similar to the views of the Chancellor.

I was as delighted as I was suprised by this. Today I am checking my sources! It has been revelaed that Gordon Brown is not going to dig in over the dreadful deal on our budget contributions that Tony Blair made at that fateful EU summit. Their joint legacy will not only be measured in the damage they have done to the very strong pension funds position they inherited, but also in upending the Thatcher settlement on contributions which did reduce them substantailly.

It is most interesting that at last we are allowed to see something under the Freedom of Information Act. I have always found my way blocked when trying to use it, or Parliamentary Questions, to prize out incriminating evidence like the Treasury advice on pension tax. Following hard on the heels of Lord Turnbull’s

We now learn that CO2 emissions have risen by 3% since Labour came to power.

All those extra motoring taxes, all that rhetoric to get people to take the train, all those air miles to attend climate change conferences, all those ministerial limo trips, all that attention to recycling, even the threat of a dustbin tax- and the emissions go up remorselessly.

My Council tax bill for my London flat has just come in.

Westminster have put up their demand by 2%, whilst Livingstone wants an extra 5.3%. A massive 44% of the total bill is taken by Livingstone and the GLA, a level of government we didn’t need or have 10 years ago.

It is not surpising he has done this - it was exactly what he did provocatively with the old GLC before its abolition. On this occasion it is difficult to think of anything the