My Tea Party friends in the US have never held Mitt Romney in high regard. Until the autumn of last year (coincidentally when the Republican presidential primary campaign began) his public rhetoric against the Obama administration was strangely muted and he has always retained an aloof distance from the tea party.

His ascension to the probable GOP nomination was strangely lacking in public warmth from ordinary voting Republicans. But it was certainly well organised with legions of surrogates doing their very best to undermine potential rivals even before the 2008 presidential election was over.

Romney didn’t win the campaign with love, but he did win it with money – and the support of a seedy coalition of GOP “consultants/strategists” , RNC hacks and those Washington/New York “conservative” media pundits apprehensive of the tea party and the new media which was beginning to break the old news monopoly.

But when I heard that Romney was coming to Britain ready to build bridges I thought maybe the guy had a bit of steel in his backbone

Members of the former Massachusetts governor’s foreign policy advisory team claimed that as president, he would reverse Mr Obama’s priority of repairing strained overseas relationships while not spending so much time maintaining traditional alliances such as Britain and Israel. …….
……..The two advisers said Mr Romney would seek to reinstate the Churchill bust displayed in the Oval Office by George W. Bush but returned to British diplomats by Mr Obama when he took office in 2009. One said Mr Romney viewed the move as “symbolically important” while the other said it was “just for starters”, adding: “He is naturally more Atlanticist”.

Then I read this

But he told US television there were “disconcerting” signs about Britain’s readiness. “It’s hard to know just how well it will turn out,” he said. “There are a few things that were disconcerting: the stories about the private security firm not having enough people, supposed strike of the immigration and customs officials, that obviously is not something which is encouraging.”
Nonetheless, Mr Romney questioned the enthusiasm of the British public. “Do they come together and celebrate the Olympic moment?” he asked. “That’s something which we only find out once the Games actually begin.”

For crying out loud – if that’s his way of building a bridge I think I would rather deal with some fruitloop from Iran….at least you know the guy is a viper right from the start.

If he knew us better he would realise that it is in our very nature to moan and complain until the event actually starts. We did that with the royal wedding and the diamond jubilee. Indeed a lot of us were never that enamoured of hosting the Olympics anyway. But now the thing has arrived our enthusiasm has already started to show….witness the crowds in every village and town to greet the Olympic torch. Why didn’t Romney’s crew do some research on that?

…and maybe Romney (as well as Allahpundit at Hot Air) forgot about the 1996 Atlanta Olympics

If International Olympic Committee (IOC) President Juan Antonio Samaranch’s address to the closing ceremonies of the 1996 Summer Olympic Games is remembered at all, it is for his unwillingness to bestow Atlanta’s Games with the honor of “the greatest in Olympic history” – that coveted rhetorical flourish lauding the host city’s organizing efforts. Unbridled commercialism, poor and unreliable public transportation, a deadly terrorist attack on Centennial Olympic Park: such significant failures shaped Samaranch’s verdict that these Olympic Games were “most exceptional,” but not “the greatest.”

Romney’s gaffe about the London Olympics, bad mouthing them even before they start is in itself of little consequence in the great scheme of things. But it does tell us something about the man…. say what you like about Sarah Palin she knows the difference between being forthright and showing good manners. Maybe Mitt Romney is really Edison Carter….

Max Headroom was shown to have been created from the memories of Edison Carter. The character’s name came from the last thing Carter saw during a vehicular accident that put him into a coma: A bar with a sign warning of low clearance, marked “MAX. HEADROOM: 2.3 M”.

Mitt Headroom, anyone?

Governor Mitt Romney, who is likely to be the Republican nominee against President Obama in the forthcoming US elections this coming November will spend the last days of July attempting to burnish his foreign policy credentials with visits to Britain, Israel and Poland.

The aim will be to introduce himself onto a world stage where the other players, on the surface at least, appear not to have bought into the disappointment and disillusion felt by large swathes of the US electorate. The myth of the transformational figure peddled by the US media in 2008 which presented a shallow Chicago machine hack as a latter day Moses who would lead his country and the rest of the world into a global era of peace and honey is still the official party line of the chattering classes outside the USA – except in Poland where Obama is seen as Putin’s poodle and Israel whose government is very wary of repeating the role of the Czechs against Obama’s Chamberlain.

So Romney wants to remind these folk that, come January there might very well be a new face in the White House with a very different world view. A lot of his foreign policy advisors could well be George W Bush retreads with a far more cynical view about resetting buttons and the faces in Warsaw and Jerusalem will be far more comfortable with that.

One would like to say that David Cameron and his London colleagues would also be keeping their fingers crossed for a Romney victory since Obama has been rather disdainful America’s closest ally with his pandering to Russia and Argentina – but, unfortunately, Cameron, like the UK media in general, is still infatuated with Obama the myth. Indeed, during his visit to Washington last March the British Prime Minister was so grovellingly obsequious to the president that Romney surrogates let it be known that they felt an election year line had been crossed.

Romney will be in London for the opening of the Olympics, reviving memories of his own connections when he was drafted in to rescue the Utah 2002 winter Olympics from corruption and confusion. However he will also take the opportunity to press some influential flesh
At his first stop, in London, Romney plans meetings with British Prime Minister David Cameron, Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg, Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne, Foreign Secretary William Hague, and Ed Miliband, who leads the opposition Labour Party. He plans fundraisers, where attendees will likely include bankers and others from London’s financial sector.

For most of this year David Cameron has been particularly gaffe prone. Let’s hope he isn’t stupid enough not to realise that, with the polls still too close to call, he might well be talking to the next US President and a man who almost certainly will have more respect for the special relationship than Obama and his Chicago cronies….

But you never can tell with Cameron. For all his Tory rhetoric you always get the feeling the man is essentially a fully paid up member of the metro elite who still hungers for approval from North London dinner parties and and the UK branch of Obama’s media “palace guard” at the BBC…and, with Michelle Obama heading the US Olympic delegation he might find her beady eye a little discomforting….

Mark Serwotka, leader of PCS, the trade union of Britain’s civil servants, is organising a strike of immigration officials at airports and seaports during the Olympics to highlight the the left’s campaign against the UK government’s austerity measures (or “cuts” as the BBC constantly characterises them)

To be fair he did organise a ballot of his members to endorse his actions and just over 50% supported him…..democracy in action, you might say, until you discover that only 20% of the membership actually voted.

Serwotka is one of the recognised leaders of British trade unionism in the 21st century – a movement which is virtually moribund in the private sector but highly organised, widely spread and extremely militant amongst public sector workers. Moreover these union men and women are no longer horny handed toilers in factories, workshops, docks and mines…..they are almost entirely white collar and they toil at filing cabinets, computer screens and photocopiers.

They regularly seed the audience at BBC Question Time, invariably railing against “cuts” and demanding more money, sharing, with Serotka, the quaint idea that you get out of recession by increasing the size of the public sector because this will then generate “growth” and help those private sector workers who have either lost their jobs or had their pensions devalued……a bit like infesting your dog with more fleas in an attempt to improve it’s health.

Faced with this 1960s sub Marxist nonsense the Great British Public appears surprisingly supine – so let me throw some petrol onto the barbecue.

public service unions would eventually create a new and powerful branch of local government presiding over fiscal matters. He warned that these unions would result in the loss of control of local budgets at the city, county and state levels of govern-ment. To support the ongoing commitments to these employees, other services provided by city, county and state governments would be severely curtailed or taxes would have to be raised.

No, that didn’t come from some hardnosed right wing blusterer but from Frank Zeidler that rarity amongst US politicians, an openly declared Socialist who was Mayor of Milwaukee during the 1950s.

When public sector workers go on strike who are they confronting, who are they fighting? Not some cigar smoking fatcat in an oaklined boardroom – they are striking against you and me, comrade, because the money that goes into their bank accounts comes from that perennial milch cow, the taxpayer. So when they say the government should pay them more they really mean that you and I need to dig deeper into our pockets to keep them at their desks shuffling paper.

Wouldn’t it be wonderful if the next time some whining public sector worker began to parrot their bleeding heart sob story from the union cribsheet the person next to them got up and in no uncertain terms told them that as a taxpayer and therefore their employer he expected them to cut the crap and do the job the rest of us were paying her to do….

Well, I can dream, can’t I?

Well we now know, courtesy of the Church of England, that last summer’s UK riots were caused by “society” and the arsonists and looters were not really accountable for their actions. The Bishop of Bath & Wells, Peter Price, echoing the words of the celebrated psychoanalyst Dr Heinz Kiosk declared that “we are all guilty”

The tragedy of our times is that, once again, we have a large population of young people who are desperate to escape from the constrained lives to which they seem to be condemned. Where hope has been killed off and with no prospect of escape, is it surprising that their energies erupt in anti-social and violent actions?
‘In a consumer society, is it surprising that lusting after high-status goods is seen as a way to find meaning?’

If, therefore, crimes are really a cry for help and “society” and more specifically, Government, needs to step in and reverse the “cuts” by providing (and financing) help then a more recent crime demonstrates an even greater need.

Sex toys worth £11,000 have been stolen by burglars who raided a mail order company, police said.

Obviously this is not a burglary per se but merely the actions of “people who are desperate to escape from the constrained lives to which they seem to be condemned”…..in other words they had to steal the vibrators because they can’t get enough sex. I am sure the Bishop of Bath and Wells would agree that the government needs to get its act together and provide them with a lot more

David Lammy is one of those smooth uber urban and expensive Labour politicians who is deeply into caring for the less fortunate. Shame then that on a crowded bus where several elderly passengers had to stand he remained glued to a seat where you are asked to give it up for the elderly/infirm/pregnant etc. The trick is, of course, if you know you should give it up and can’t be bothered you always find something absolutely fascinating outside the window…..

Pic taken by a follower of Eye Spy MP where we can all post comments about observing our wonderful politicians while they think they are outside the spotlight…long may it prosper….

h/t Guido Fawkes

Guardianista left winger Laurie Penny accused historian David Starkey of being “racist” and a tax fiddler etc etc (she mingled with the OWS crowd in the USA recently)

She should not have messed with Starkey, who is gay and who came from a humble background. He is also right wing in his views and always robust in stating them even in front of the bleeding heart liberals at the BBC.

Note for US friends – in the UK a “Public School” is in fact an independent private school that charges annual fees of several thousand pounds per year and is therefore almost always attended by the children of the rich. 95% of children in the UK attend “State” schools funded out of taxation and therefore charging no fees..

It’s handbags at dawn as Peter Oborne gives Tim Montgomerie and his Ashcroft funded Conservativehome website a bitchslap in the dark alleyway behind DT HQ. Ashcroft is using Montgomerie as a sock puppet to shift Cameron & Co to the right, wails a distraught Oborne and it’s not fair because Peter wants David all to himself.

Others can dissect the root causes of this catfight better than myself but there are some observations that need to be made –the most obvious being that it’s a bit rich Oborne screeching about Ashcroft using his wealth to bankroll a media outlet in order to channel his own views. After all, he himself is obviously trousering a few sovs from the reclusive Barclay brothers who not only own the DT but also fiercely resist all attempts at invading their privacy. They say they run a hands off operation but articles about Sark politics and sycophantic features about Catholicism tend to open that claim to question.

Then this complaint about hectoring Cameron from the DT seems rather strange when one recalls the vicious guerrilla warfare waged by the paper against John Major in the 90s on behalf of….(don’t laugh)…Michael Portillo…”man of destiny” etc…

Oborne, of course, assumes, like most pundits, that we ordinary folk are incapable of drawing up our own opinions and need guidance from the pundit priesthood to make the right decisions. Hence we Tories supposedly pore over the Telegraph or Conservativehome to find out what we should be thinking today, rather like earnest Bolsheviks leafing through Pravda in the 1930s.

Cobblers

Many Tory voters don’t even read the DT – and probably a large number of those who do would not bother with Oborne. Even fewer visit ConHome (and when you read some of the comments there they seem to be mostly wearing tinfoil hats)

Peter and Tim are obviously big in the Westminster village – and that is their limit. Both of them shrink down to size when on TV…..Montgomerie is like a fairly unsuccessful insurance salesman and Oborne brilliantly fills the role of the pompous, opinionated Latin teacher at some third rate prep school.

Give me Nigel Farage or Dan Hannan any day…

And as for one person being able to influence conservatives with a tweet or a few words on Facebook there is only one person in the western world who can do that – Sarah Palin in the USA. Both Oborne and Montgomerie would view her with disdain. But then they need to ask themselves why her words have so much power.

Maybe it has to do with honesty and fearlessness – and not giving a tinker’s cuss what anyone else thinks…

Great stuff from Mark Steyn on Barack Obama who, like UK Labour Party leader Ed Milliband and Francois Hollande, the new socialist president of France, prefers to operate from outer space where he feels he can safely ignore the laws of gravity and economics…

Soaring rhetoric at a time of earthbound problems — jobs, debt — risks making the president sound ridiculous. Granted, there’s a lot of it about this time of year — commencement speakers assuring kids who can’t manage middle-school math that you can be anything you want to be as long as you dream your dreams. But Obama offers an even more absurd evolution of this grim trope: “I can be anything I want to be as long as you chumps dream your dreams.”

Unfortunately , as the French elections have taught us, there is no shortage in the west of misty eyed optimists always ready to be seduced by the snake oil salesmen who readily tell you what you want to hear. But eventually even the biggest sucker eventually gets to realise that there is no such thing as a free lunch..

Self-pity is never an attractive quality, and in an elected head of state even less so. Obama whines that his opponents say it’s all his fault. One can argue about whose fault it is, but not, as my colleagues at National Review pointed out, whose responsibility it is: It’s his. He’s the only president we have. And he made things worse. He increased the national debt by some 70 percent, and what do we have to show for it? No dams, no railroads, no moon shots. Just government, and bureaucracy, and regulation, unto national bankruptcy.

“Fly me to the moon / Let me play among the stars . . . ” Who needs another moon shot? Obama’s already up there, soaring ever more unmoored from reality. Pity us mere mortals back on Planet Earth, living in the land he made.

The good news is that while out walking the other day I came across just the bunch of fellows who can help Obama (and Milliband and Hollande) keep their feet firmly on the ground…

BTW Actually Earthbound Services is a great example of a successful local business creating jobs….there are thousands of these small businesses in the UK driving the engine of growth (and no, I have don’t have any connection with the company, just liked their lorry and found out more about them later…)

I know we should be concerned about Syria, the euro and lots of other problems across the globe. But in reality it’s almost always local issues, literally at street level, that get us fired up…maybe because we can actually get a handle on what is happening and the direct impact.

Hence my post on January 26th 2011 was a cri de coeur – yet incredibly the gods smiled upon me..until a few days ago…

When we drive out of our road, Allyington Way, we almost always turn right into Street Hill because that way leads to the main road (B2036) and the M23 or Crawley.

A few months ago turning right would have been a little more difficult

Now once we have turned right we drive about 150 yds downhill along this road to the T junction at the bottom

Previously we just hoped and prayed we wouldn’t meet another vehicle coming up the hill

It’s quite a busy little hill because it acts as a cut through to avoid traffic on the main road so you can see how pleased the residents of Allyington Way were when West Sussex County Council published a notice saying they were putting down those double yellow lines to ban parking at any time.

A bit draconian to do that, you might ask?

I don’t think so.

For many years during weekdays only the odd car parked on Street Hill. At weekends church users might fill the road up but rarely for longer than a couple of hours at the most.

The parking problems came with the construction of a nearby industrial estate by the northbound Jct 10A of the M23. Not only did several employees park all day on the hill but it also appeared to be become regularly used as a storage area for vehicles from the car dealership on the estate. Then at other times it was clogged with Sky vans, either from the industrial estate or maybe from meetings at a nearby hotel. The volume of parking often turned the hill during weekdays into a virtual one way street. The double yellow lines have stopped that. Where these vehicles have gone is unclear (a handful still park in the unlined area further up) but they do not appear, on weekdays, to be parking locally.

You can therefore understand why last week we were astonished to receive a notice from West Sussex County Council saying they were going to remove most of the double yellow lines in the first and third pictures above – thus allowing the return of the inconsiderate parking seen in the second and forth pictures.

Straight away we realised that the restoration of the scene in picture 2 would raise serious issues.

Firstly the pedestrian slope onto the pavement on the east side that is just to the north of the entrance to our road would no longer be protected by yellow lines. Since the upper west side of Street Hill has no pavement this means that, as before, pedestrians who need to cross from west to east might well have to squeeze past parked cars and possibly miss that slope completely…hard luck if you are blind, a wheelchair user or have a toddler in a pushchair….or the grass verge is muddy.

Indeed it would really be going against official guidelines because, at present the double yellow lines opposite our road help to reinforce Para 217 of the Highway Code

217: DO NOT park your vehicle or trailer on the road where it would endanger, inconvenience or obstruct pedestrians or other road users. For example, do not stop
• opposite or within 10 metres (32 feet) of a junction, except in an authorised parking space
• where the kerb has been lowered to help wheelchair users

I know that before the lines were painted weekday parking – and some weekend parking – made a mockery of Para 217 yet the WSCC proposals will allow those inconsiderate drivers to inconvenience local residents once again. It just seems odd that WSCC are quite sanguine about this.

I contacted WSCC and our local WSCC elected member, Councillor Richard Burrett, to find out why. It turned out that a number of people living in Saxon Road about 500yds up the hill had claimed that vehicles would move up closer to them during the week and park in and around their road – what they called “displacement parking”.

Fair enough, I suppose. The sensible option would have been to monitor parking for maybe one year to see if that did happen and then make a further judgement on the results. But for some reason there was panic in County Hall and an amended proposal to black out the lines put forward as a “compromise”

This rather cack handed response has made us very unhappy and we are asking ourselves why a so called compromise would actually restore almost everything we had complained about over several years – and why the views of those living further up the hill should carry such weight.

The joke of it is that there is no evidence that on weekdays there has been any “displacement parking” further up the hill and very little at weekends. This is just a big fat nothingburger.

I’m sorry, WSCC, this is simply not good enough. The people of Allyington Way are very unhappy that the residents of another road appear to be able to convince the county council to amend a Traffic Regulation Order by mere speculation rather than systematic monitoring over a twelve month period.

Lord Leveson, the big legal cheese heading up the Inquiry into media behaviour and, it appears everything else in infinity and beyond, had his bewigged fronds bruised by the audacity of a member of a government duly elected by a majority of British voters who said

the Leveson Inquiry had created a ‘chilling atmosphere’ towards freedom of expression and any attempt to tighten regulation of newspapers could result in ‘a cure worse than the original disease’.

It is alleged that the noble lord was deeply aggrieved by such abusive language and perhaps he almost considered referring the matter to his unelected mates at the European Court of Human Rights. But, instead, he took the UK Establishment route. The unelected judge complained to an unelected civil servant, no less a figure than Sir Jeremy Heywood, the Cabinet Secretary and Britain’s pen pusher supreme.

Memos obviously went back and forth. Quiet words were probably whispered into certain ears. Attempts to unruffle feathers were made. No doubt the golden mantra of avoiding a “fuss” could be heard in the corridors of power. So when Michael Gove, the Secretary of State for Education, the minister who had so rattled the Levesonian cage, was summoned to give evidence to the Inquiry himself it was expected that, still smarting from rapped knuckles, he would, like Henry II in 1174, crawl on his knees in penance across the room, clothed in sackcloth and covered with ashes.

Instead the noble judge was shocked to find Mr. Gove not only defiant but openly aggressive in his attitude towards the Inquiry in general and His Levesonianship in particular.

Mr. Gove, the Education Secretary, gave an impassioned defence of the right to offend people as he gave evidence to the hearing on media ethics. Mr. Gove clashed with the judge several times, as he warned against knee-jerk decisions to put new restrictions on newspapers and broadcasters. “The cry, ‘Something must be done’ often leads to people doing something which isn’t always wise,”

Moreover he actually had the nerve to rebuke His Legal Lordship

The judge said he was concerned that the Education Secretary was prepared to put up with “unacceptable, albeit not necessarily criminal” behaviour from journalists because of the right to freedom of speech.
Mr. Gove said some cases of press misbehaviour were “deplorable” but argued that these could be punished under existing laws, such as defamation. “Freedom of speech doesn’t mean anything unless some people are going to be offended some of the time,” the minister said. Defending the “rough-edged” trade of journalism, the minister said it “twas ever thus” that reporters are unpopular. “Politicians and journalists have always tended to be held in relatively low regard,” he said

Politicians and journalists have always tended to be held in relatively low regard
He might easily have added lawyers and judges…….

Mick Hume at Spiked sums up this farce in his usual straight from the hip style

We are faced with an almost medieval spectacle of a judge and his top lawyer acting as priestly men of wisdom, apparently drawing their authority from some higher power, to interrogate and pass judgement on elected politicians and other public figures from the mortal world. That might have seemed strange and worrying enough. Stranger and more worrying still, however, is that so many rational and liberal-minded figures have chosen not merely to kowtow to the unreasonable power of the inquisition, but to cheer on the inquisitors

Cameron’s attempt to hit this hacking affair into the long grass by setting up the Inquiry has been a signal failure. Instead of allowing the courts to decide if actual laws had been broken by examining evidence he merely provided an additional trough into which well heeled lawyers and celebrity weasels can plunge their snouts.

Full marks. then, to Mr Gove for pricking the Levesonian balloon. However, even more satisfying, it seems clear that the general public have already filed this as a circus of relevance only to the Westminster village. With the Eurozone imploding and the UK economy at ground zero the noble lord and his underlings are prancing around the sawdust to a rapidly dwindling audience.