We're not good at trains

Today, the government awarded a £7.5bn contract to build a fleet of intercity trains to consortium including Hitachi, a Japanese firm. They didn't give it to a consortium including Bombardier, who make trains in Derby, employing 2,000 people.

I'm not surprised. We are rubbish at trains in this country. If you exclude the Eurostar, which isn't ours, the best train we have is the Virgin Pendolino, which is always late and often broken. We aren't good at these things. The Japanese, on the other hand have the Shinkansen (bullet train) which is never late and always works and travels at 168mph or faster, depending on the line. I've been on the Bullet Train between Tokyo and Kyoto, and I'd choose it over our trains any day. The Japanese know how to make fast trains. We don't.

Apparently Hitachi have agreed to have the trains assembled in the UK. I hope they don't expect them to be ready on time.

I'm with Clarkson - Brown is an idiot

There has been a lot of huffing and puffing today about something Jeremy Clarkson has said about our dear Prime Minister. Comparing him to Kevin Rudd, the Australian Prime Minister, Clarkson described Gordon Brown as a "one-eyed Scottish idiot". He also accused Brown of lying to the public. 

Now, Jeremy Clarkson has a talent for offending people, and in this case has managed to offend Scottish people, blind people and idiots all at once. He has since apologised for making a comment about Gordon Brown's "personal appearance" but, notably, has not said sorry for calling him a liar and an idiot. And he shouldn't. 

Gordon Brown having only one working eye is irrelevant, so it was a cheap comment to make. But Gordon Brown being Scottish is not irrelevant, as shown by the furious response from Labour MPs and the Scottish Labour leader Iain Gray. Indeed Gordon Banks MP called Clarkson's comments "unforgivable". But why is it unforgivable to point out that Gordon Brown is a Scottish idiot?

Ever since Tony Blair (also Scottish, don't forget) brought the Scottish Parliament into being in 1999, we have been in the bizarre situation where England is run by Scottish people (Blair, Brown, Darling, Alexander, Murphy et al), Wales and Northern Ireland, despite having their own assemblies, are more or less run by the same bunch of Scottish people, and Scotland is run by two different sets of Scottish people.

Scottish devolution has created an imbalance in the power bases in the UK which will eventually need to be sorted out. Gordon Brown being Scottish is undoubtedly relevant, as is his being an idiot and a liar. We know he's an idiot, and a stubborn one at that; and if you count hiding public expenditure off balance-sheet and redefining the economic cycle so as to claim he has met his golden rule as lying - and I do - then he is a proven liar. 

I agree with Clarkson - and people need to stop bouncing up and down in indignation whenever people like him say anything mildly controversial. If they stop and think about it, they might realise he has a point. 

Public Health - Private Choice

Despite my libertarian tendencies, I do accept that there are certain things that government has to do and for which government is necessary. The maintenance of basic infrastructure, the enforcement of the rule of law and the defence of the nation for instance are all things that would be very hard to organise properly any other way. 

However, there are many areas where government interference is not just a bad idea, it is expensive and counterproductive.  One such area is "public health": a carefully self-justifying phrase. It sounds like an obviously good thing - after all, that's health for all of us, right? But actually "public health" is generally a euphemism for "telling people what to do".  The constant barrage of "public health initiatives" under this government has not made people any healthier. Despite the enormous amounts of our money spent telling us not to eat junk food, not to eat salt, not to drink alcohol, not to smoke and so on, we are forever being told that as a nation we are fatter, less healthy and more prone to binge-drinking and the resulting general thuggery.

This is not surprising - the "public" is not, as government bodies assume, a single entity, but a group of individuals. As an individual, I will put as much salt on my food as is required to make it taste nice, no matter what the government say. If I had children, I would do the same for them. And if I want to go out and drink beer in the pub with my friends until closing time and then sway gently home, I will do this too. It really doesn't matter how much the government tell me not to: if I like it I'll do it - it's my choice, after all.

And this is why people like Dr Alan Maryon-Davis are so wide of the mark. He is such a fan of these public health initiatives (we pay him to be, whether we like it or not) that he wants to extend them yet further. In the article I've linked to, he proposes banning people from smoking in their car if there is a child on board. But a car is private property - so legislation like this would logically lead to all sorts of other rules about what we can and can't do, even in our own homes. I surely can't be the only person to think that this is not just a bad idea, but wrong. 

Public health sounds like a great idea, but the reality is often expensive, illiberal and ineffective: inform us by all means, but stop the "it's for your own good" nannying. 

The problem with Gaza - we still lack humanism.

It may seem presumptuous to suggest that I know what the problem is with the Middle East. But I think I do. I don't know how to solve it, unfortunately, or rather I have no sensible way of achieving what needs to be achieved, but I can see where we're going wrong.

Gaza is, like so many violent flashpoints, riven by religious divisions. In this particular case, we have to go back to 1947 when the British Mandate of Palestine, designed to provide a "national home for the Jewish people" and accepted by the League of Nations, was interpreted by the UN as a partitioned Palestine: part Jewish and part Arab. Indeed, Jerusalem was to be an international city, presided over by the UN.

The state of Israel, unhappy with this arrangement, then declared independence in 1948, which started a war with its neighbours. A war which has, to all intents and purposes, never stopped. 

The problem here, and it is fundamental, is a lack of humanism. The Jewish people and the Arabs are not different in any significant way. Indeed, one could argue historically that they worship the same god, more or less. But that's just it - worshipping under a different set of rules shouldn't matter.

The Jewish people feel that they have been persecuted over the centuries. This is undoubtedly true, but they are far from being the only religious/ethnic group who have suffered, and they must not use this as an excuse - all it amounts to is "he hit me first" - which has never been accepted by parents dealing with brawling children, after all. 

On the other hand, we currently have Hamas, a bunch of Islamists who are undoubtedly as bad as the serious Zionists. Their presumption (and it drives them) is that people of other ethnicities and other faiths are inherently inferior. Evil, even. This is so ludicrous I almost don't want to discuss it, but I do think it's important to explain why they are wrong.

I don't expect everyone to love each other. That's not how people work. Jesus was a great teacher of loving kindness, but he was an idealist too. Nevertheless, we must understand that if the human race is to operate in any sensible, productive way, we must rise above the ancient religious bickering and start to respect the human. Because we are all human: the reason agnostics in Milton Keynes get upset about the slaughter of children in Gaza is not because they are Hamas supporters; it's because they are witnessing entirely needless human suffering. And it isn't helpful to blame one side or the other.  That merely reinforces an artificial divide. 

The Middle East is being torn apart by the great falsehood of the ancient religions: that by adhering to your particular religion, you become better than those who don't. This isn't true. I hope this is self-evident. A human being is a human being, not inherently better or worse than any other. If that human is doing nothing to harm anyone, it should be left alone to get on with its life. 

This surely shouldn't be so hard. But for millennia it has been. Humans feel threatened by difference, but they shouldn't: if someone is trying to hurt you, they are bad, and you should fight it. But if someone simply wants to live next door, or even share your country then have a good look  - is this person actually any sort of threat? Or are they a simply another human just like you?

Ken's back, and not a moment too soon

It was with great relief that I heard today that Ken Clarke is officially back in the shadow cabinet, after an absence that really has been too long. One of the few really credible, capable and knowledgeable politicians in the House of Commons was wasted on the back benches and if ever we needed him, it's, well, about two years ago, actually, before this whole credit business came to a head. His has been one of the few really sane voices in the whole debate: a soothing balm of common sense to alleviate the pain of being forced to listen to Gordon Brown and his idiots, sorry, team, talking about getting into lots more debt to solve a problem caused by, er, too much debt. Putting out a fire with petrol has never been a good idea.

As shadow Business Secretary, Ken is up against Peter "Mandy" Mandelson, whose return has not helped at all. Here's hoping that Call Me Dave actually listens to Clarke - we might even end up with some vaguely sensible alternative economic policies from Her Majesty's Opposition. 

The Conservatives will have to do better than a desperate housewife

Last night's BBC Question Time panel was a woeful sight. From left we had:

Lembit Opik, whose calls for a "mature debate" sit uncomfortably with his childish publicity-seeking behaviour.

Will Self, the self appointed guru of pessimism, who clearly (erroneously) believes himself intellectually superior to the rest of the human race. Sitting next to Lembit Opik, his face looked almost normal.

Nadine Dorries, a Conservative MP and former nurse who appeared to have no real opinions at all as she sought to say almost anything which would get her a bit of applause.

Jim Knight (who?), the Schools Minister, who sat and merrily parroted the script he'd had written for him in an affable but vacant way.

And the awful, horse-faced Esther Rantzen, whose recent time in the jungle appears to have so addled her brain that she thinks Gordon Brown has been a great steward of our economy.

Most depressing, for someone who cherishes the prospect of a new, better government in the near future, was that the Conservatives had seen fit to put forward Nadine Dorries. She was so out of her depth she really needed a snorkel, and she wasn't up against the hottest political opposition, either. It was like listening to one long vox pop from a suburban housewife who had read a Conservative press release, rather than a spokesman for Her Majesty's Opposition. Even Lembit "I'm a Cheeky Boy, look at my Segway" Opik sounded serious by comparison.

Come on, Dave, you can do better than this. At a time when proper Conservatism is more important than it has been for years, we need to hear credible Conservative voices, not token blonde women.

Welcome to Devon

This weekend I went to Budleigh Salterton, near Exmouth for a pretty hectic 48 hours. In this time I was struck be just how friendly and helpful the locals were (with the exception of the staff in the CoOp, who were deeply suspicious of us) and how relaxed the whole place seemed to be. As a Londoner, the following story more or less sums it up.

At the end of the first night, after a rehearsal with the band and a trip to the pub, I was walking back to my hotel. Unfortunately, I was walking back a different way to the way I had driven earlier, and I had taken a wrong turning, and ended up in an unidentifiable residential street - street lighting is sparse. When I realised this, I stopped to get my Sat Nav out of my rucksack, which seemed the sensible thing to do to find out where I was. As I did this, a police car approached. I thought nothing of it - in London, police cars are around all the time. But the policeman (who was alone in the patrol car) stopped and asked me if I was alright and if I knew where I was going. I told him where I was staying and said I was going to check on my Sat Nav (which I had in my hand), so I was fine. He got there first with his and offered me a lift. In fact, he insisted on giving me a lift to my hotel, sympathising with my plight - "it all looks different at night, don't it?". 

A policeman with so little to worry about that he can give a lift to someone who is perfectly capable of finding his own way? That's Budleigh for you.