We are staying in a cottage in Fowey in Cornwall which looks down the hill to the harbour.

Enjoying an ice cream….

While the grandchildren and our son in law walk along to the quayside

The kids love it by the sea

Harry 6, Pippa 9, Hannah 12

Funny how with a six year old the shoe “accidently” left his foot and began to float away

Our daughter shares a joke with The Lovely Mrs P

Hannah wonders if Grandma is being serious when she says that once upon a time she was 12….

While I wonder if it’s time for a refreshing gin and tonic….

But at least the sun is shining….

Lena Jeger was a British left wing Labour MP who was a constant thorn in the side of the party leadership during the fifties, sixties and seventies. However she was also a down to earth politician always willing to tell a story against herself.

In 1953, when electioneering in London in a run down block of flats, she met a woman in the lift. Jeger straight away began quizzing her on what, for the Labour left, was the big issue of the day in the early 50s – should, eight years after Hitler’s defeat, West Germany be allowed to create an army .

Jeger was passionately opposed to the creation of a new German Army and wanted to know if she  agreed with her views. The woman looked Jeger straight in the eye and, ignoring Germany, raised a totally different issue.

“People have been pissing in this lift. What are you going to do about it?”

Jeger said even if she were elected there was not much she could do about it and went back to talking about the threat of a rearmed Germany.

The lady wasn’t impressed.

“Well,” said the woman. “If you can’t stop people pissing in lifts, how are you going to stop the Germans rearming?”

In later years Jeger always said the woman’s comment deflated her own sense of self importance and made her realise that ordinary people usually have a set of priorities very different from the opinionated windbaggerry of the political class.

Politicians usually love grand schemes and plans and love the concept of “the big picture” because it always contains a cushion of excuse when things don’t quite pan out as they predicted. Voters are concerned about the here and now as it impinges on them.

Very rarely shall the twain meet…..

N.B. For US readers: flats = apartments, lift = elevator

Robert Stacy McCain is infuriatingly addictive.

OK sometimes his Runyonesque shtick can be irritating and he mounts hobbyhorses that usually take him round into ever decreasing circles (on contraception he is more catholic than the pontiff himself, waxing ever lyrical about vast families)

His recent feminism cat fight with Little Miss Attila ended fairly quickly with him being tied into a reef knot and, very gently, plopped out of the arena. Somewhere AJ Kelshiker is smiling…

His current emergence as a military pundit lecturing the Libyan rebels on their tactical shortcomings is quite astonishing for a man who clearly loves history. Show me an example of a group of ill armed, militarily inexperienced insurgents who, within a month, have transformed themselves into a formidable fighting force and I’ll maybe concede some ground. Otherwise, Stacy, just leave the long distance commenting based on press reports to Allahpundit and his cat.

But for all of that when he is in common sense mode on the key issues vital to the day to day battle against the seductive prescriptions of snake oil salesmen like Krugman and their water carriers (often laughingly claiming to be “journalists”) Stacy is THE MAN…

How does deficit reduction take money out of the economy?

The federal government doesn’t have a Magic Pot O’ Money and, contrary to whatever Ben Bernanke apparently believes, it can’t create money from thin air. Every dime that the federal government spends must come from one of three sources:

1.  Taxation, which obviously takes money out of the economy.

1. Borrowing (i.e., deficit spending), which also takes money out of the economy, in the form of drains on investment. Money that is spent by private investors to buy government debt (i.e., bonds) is money not available to private business either as loans or as investment capital (stock).
2. Inflation, which devalues currency and thereby — yes, you guessed it — takes money out of the economy.

So Ben Adler’s idea that reducing the annual deficit means “taking all this money out of the economy” has no basis in reality.

= Stacynomics 101

RSM for Treasury in the Palin cabinet?

Whoops – I forgot….Stacy’s pledged himself to another…..

John Lewis, when asked why the MJQ played God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen, said there were certain tunes (like GRYMG and When Johnny Comes Marching Home) that just make you feel good.

So true.

Well, here’s another – yes, I know its only Aqua with the great Luciano Pavarotti – but just watch and feel the buzz. I defy anyone to remain passive whenever this tune is played – it’s probably one of the most familiar tunes in the western world – and even if your knowledge of Italian is zilch everyone can pump out part of that chorus line…

Yet isn’t it rather weird that this most famous of songs is about – a funicular railway! Viennese waltz king Richard Strauss couldn’t believe it either. He thought it was a cheerful royalty free Italian folk song and loved it so much he included it in one of his works, “Aus Italien”

Big mistake

Lawyers hit him like a rocket – lawyers acting on behalf of Luigi Denza who had composed the music to fit words written by journalist Peppino Turco. The courts sided with Denza and thereafter he got a chunk of royalty every time Aus Italien was played.

So “Funiculì, Funiculà” is a song written about a funicular railway – but not just any funicular railway. Turco and Denza wrote it for the opening of the line that opened in 1880 to take visitors to the top of Mount Vesuvius, the volcano overlooking the Bay of Naples.

What is even more interesting is that it was probably written as an advertisement for the railway – possibly the world’s first commercial jingle….

Up to the 1870s the only way for tourists to avoid an exhausting climb to the crater of Vesuvius was either by a sedan chair or on the back of a donkey. The chair carriers and donkey owners were all locals, rather surly characters who charged exorbitant fees and guarded their monopoly with brutal ferocity.

When the plans for the railway were announced they felt threatened. The project managers, fearing that their employees might be intimidated, disbursed money to the porters as a gesture of compensation for reduced business.

Initially this appeared to work – until they realised that rumours were being spread that the railway was dangerous. The management then decided to mount their own PR campaign and it is quite likely that Turco and Denza were given an unofficial commission to compose something to publicise the project – and the rest is history.

Indeed the song has outlived its subject. The Vesuvius Funicular was destroyed in the eruption of 1944 and is long gone. Today you can take a bus halfway then walk the rest, which is how we got there.

There has been talk of building another railway, though whether anything will be done is debatable. But that is irrelevant. The railway is gone but the song remains – and I guarantee that, during the turn of the century celebrations in Italy in 2100, “Funiculì, Funiculà” will still be belted out with gusto…..

Right wing shock chick Frances Martel  is obviously on the look out for a gig at the Daily Caller because she just penned one of the most brown nosing job applications I have ever seen in her recent Palin hit piece at Mediaite.

It ostensibly centred around Palin’s response to a Daily Caller round up of criticism from the right of her governor’s signature on a bipartisan law granting tax credits to media companies wanting to work in Alaska.  The DC  made much of some rather sniffy comments from Jim Geraghty at NRO about subsidies etc (rather rich coming from Mr Tax Deductible himself, as Dan Riehl pointed out in  a classic debagging) and attached a statement from Palin defending her policy.

Palin felt the DC article had not been fairly structured so aired her views in a Facebook post which also referenced a rather degrading comment about her that DC boss Tucker Carlson had made on Twitter.

This was too much for Martel. As a Harvard girl she just felt so angry that some snowbilly mom from the sticks should have the audacity to criticise a rich guy who attended a top Rhode Island boarding school and graduated from one of the leading Little Ivies.

Didn’t Palin know, she trilled, that Tucker Carlson

spent the better part of a decade challenging liberal talking points in a pre-Fox News world…..spent five years face to face with James Carville promoting conservative principles on Crossfire and later hosting a show on MSNBC before landing at Fox News.

OMG that must have been tough – out there in the studio in front of the cameras taking the shots and nothing to show for it but a six figure salary….and while young Tucker was out there doing real hand to hand combat what was Palin doing for the conservative cause – apart from having babies?

Nothing much at all, except run a town then doing a little bitty piece of energy regulation and catching some GOP hands in the till then becoming governor of her state against the political establishment of both parties. How could that possibly compare with pontificating on the screen or in print?

Martel then makes her job pitch.

it’s probably best not to throw stones (at) a house with as strong a foundation among conservatives as Carlson’s.

Carlson, you see, is the future of conservatism because, as a media operative he can still “engage the opposition” whereas

Palin has crippled the misnamed “conservative” (more aptly defined as pro-freedom) right wing such that it is difficult to see the Republican Party win back the presidency for at least the next decade

And how did she do that?  By infiltrating the Tea Party movement which Martel says was originally just a bunch of Ron Paul supporters with ideals totally alien to Palin . These innocents obviously had no idea that Palin’s sinister influence would have such a negative impact on the 2010 election.

But wait a minute…according to Martel Palin has no “communication skills” or “likability” so how was she able to take over the Tea Party?

Sorry, folks, if you’re looking for logic then Frances Martel is just not your girl. At Harvard she was called a wannabe Anne Coulter and alleged to be bubbling around some of the more questionable edges of the right.  As for her reporting skills one hopes that the excuse of youth and exuberance might be offered to justify some fairly shoddy reporting.

Now normally most reasonable observers would agree that left liberal hopenchangey hack Joy Reid is a few centimes short of a franc when it comes to attempting to comment without bias but the bitchslap she gave to Martel over her Mediaite rehash of the alleged Obama/Vera Baker “affair” had the ring of truth about it. As Palin would say there is enough going wrong in America under Obama without having to resort to desperate measures involving certificates or alleged mistresses.

Martel got into trouble with some boxing fans when she appeared to imply that Manny Pacquiao was on steroids. Her shock chick tactics of dissing Sarah Palin’s conservative credentials appear to be a manifestation of “look at me I’m so cutting edge” vanity scribblings than solid, old fashioned shoeleather journalism.

Maybe Frances Martel should be tested for steroids….

We’ve been out of the loop for a few days. Over the weekend we helped our son and his family in their house move from this in London

to this, in the countryside…

…and when you look out of the front door you see this…

We helped them empty some of the 10,000 boxes (well it seemed like that, most of them containing toys), sort out the kids for their new schools and find out how the electricity, water supply, drainage and central heating worked. What is always odd about buying a house (for most people by far the most expensive thing they will ever purchase) is that you usually make the decision after spending maybe just an hour or two looking it over so when you actually move in that’s when the exploration really begins.

But the new house has so much potential – a large garden, already well tended and an attached garage with room for two cars plus generous workbench space – ideal for our son’s pride and joy (at present lodged in our garage..lol..)

 Next to the garage is another outbuilding, currently a woodstore but easily converted into an office/spare bedroom. There is also space to park several cars (a nice change from the street only parking at their previous house) so hopefully by the end of the year they should be comfortably ensconced with a three year plan to turn it into a dream home – finances permitting!

The other day I went to  to our local hospital  for some minor repair work at Crawley’s Day Surgery unit. Arrived at 7.45am, general anasthaetic at 9.00am, recovery room 9.30am, reception ward 10.30am, picked up and driven home by The Lovely Mrs P at 1.00pm (with an assortment of drugs, dressings etc) – everything courtesy of our National Health Service (NHS)

I know a lot of my American friends, in their battle against ObamaCare, wield our UK NHS as a cudgel to beat up the enemy, using highly selective anectdotal “evidence” to highlight the shortcomings of a state controlled medical system. Now I, as a fairly cynical English version of Edward Abbey, would be the first to admit that the NHS (which ranks alongside the Chinese Army and Indian Railways in terms of employee numbers) can at times be unwieldy, inefficient and bureaucratic. But as a consumer my own personal experience has been predominantly positive both at my local doctor’s practice and hospital.

At my day surgery I treated with care and respect by all staff, given a full explanation of procedures, contantly reassured and everything possible was done to maintain my dignity without compromising the need to deal with my private parts.

Because the service is “free” (I know, I know I subsidise it via my taxes) I did not have to wade through mountains of  documents trying to persuade a cost conscious insurance company to pay the price of my treatment. Of course the NHS is cost conscious as well and there are certain procedures and drugs that have to be weighed against some sort of cost/benefit analysis (by the same sort of “faceless bureaucrats” who presumably also operate in US insurance companies) but in the vast majority of situations we don’t have to worry so much if a normal, everyday procedure uncovers the need for further treatment.

As I once said to my friend R A Mansour let every country decide for itself how it runs it’s own healthcare. Good Americans I respect and admire have fought hard against ObamaCare and I would be the last to advocate that the NHS is a model for export. On the other hand our system, for all it’s faults, has the support of the vast majority of people in the UK, whatever their political persuasion – which is why I get a little irritated when it is dissed from across the pond.

BTW – two factoids that are worthy of note:

1. Private health insurance a la USA is alive and kicking in the UK and many employers include 100% premiums in their job packages (used mainly to jump the queue for routine procedures although NHS waiting times have reduced over the last few years)
2. % of GDP spent on healthcare (admittedly from 2004 but still useful as a bench mark)…. USA 13.9, UK 7.5, weighted average across western world 8.3……issues here of value for money?

In the UK we call them  lorries, not trucks and, of course, we drive on the left, not on the right, but whichever country you live in it must be a terrifying moment when you are on a dual carriageway and suddenly come face to face with a vehicle driving in the wrong direction….

The lorry swerved to avoid the car but jack knifed, overturned and ended on it’s side amongst the bushes, shedding 50 tons of cement bags. The car’s front was ripped off as it clipped the red lorry. Amazingly nobody was seriously injured so some guardian angels must have been working very hard that day.

Police have charged a 20 year old woman with dangerous driving.

About 15 minutes drive from our house are the timeless gardens of Nymans in the village of Handcross, West Sussex.

Ludwig Messel, a wealthy stockbroker, bought the Nymans estate in 1890 and spent the rest of his life creating what became one of the most beautiful gardens in England. After Ludwig died in 1915 his son Leonard continued his father’s work and on his death in 1953 he bequeathed the estate to The National Trust.

When we arrived ealier this week the grounds were waking from the long sleep of winter and my wife captured these moments on camera.

It was the first warm day of the year so we walked into the woods on the edge of the estate

The starkness of the still wintering trees was reflected in the waters of the pool…

We strolled along a magical path…

Then up the hill towards a lonely tree..

To our left was the ridge that carried the road to Handcross with the tower on it’s crest.

Then back to the grace of the formal garden..

Echoing Wordsworth’s most famous poem…

Around the corner another sudden blaze of colour….

…and past a door guarding a place of secret whispers…

…and every footfall reveals the tiniest emblem of nature’s rebirth.

It is remarkable that since Nymans Garden was created in 1890 it has seen only three Head Gardeners: James Comber from 1895-1953; Cecil Nice, who began working at Nymans in 1924 and succeeded James Comber as Head Gardener in 1953; and currently David Masters, who took over when Cecil retired in 1980.

After days of indecision and prevarication (much of it emanating from President Obama) the UN Security Council has authorised “all necessary measures” (including a No Fly Zone) to prevent the forces of the Gaddafi regime inflicting further violence on Libyans.

David Cameron will feel a sense of vindication tonight.

An idea which was condemned as sabre-rattling, unworkable and unnecessary has been agreed after days of intense diplomacy.

Moreover it could be said Cameron has injected a small measure of steel into President Obama’s backbone, because, according to Nick Robinson of the BBC, even up to the wire Obama was still “examining options” (often at the 8^th hole)

No wonder yesterday’s White House press briefing included questions suggesting the president was “sitting on the fence”, “satisfied to follow not lead” and needed to make a decision (see transcript below). Leadership, the press pack were told by a defensive White House press spokesman, involves considering the mission, it’s likelihood of success and the risks it poses

Cameron, with President Sarkozy of France, has been quite consistent in his advocacy of some form  of international intervention since the very beginning of Gaddafi’s backlash against the uprising in Libya.

Cameron is not a particularly popular figure in the right blogosphere, mainly as a result of his decision to form a coalition government with Nick Clegg’s Liberal Democrats after last May’s election which made the Tories the biggest party in Parliament but with no overall majority.

Working with the Liberals means that many positions that I and other right wing Tories hold dear (leave the EU, ignore the European Court of Human Rights, stricter immigration control etc) have to be left in abeyance. But that is because the enormous deficit left to us by Labour’s profligacy has to be number one priority.

As Churchill (a lifetime anti Bolshevik) said when he unconditionally offered British support for Stalin after Hitler’s invasion of Russia

If Hitler invaded hell I would make at least a favourable reference to the devil in the House of Commons. 

So kudos to Cameron for doing the heavy lifting on Libya.

Of course, there is someone else who was treated with contempt and disdain when she advocated a NFZ even earlier than Cameron – but what the hell would she know about the world outside Wasilla?