Beware of bearing gifts to the Greek's

It been an interesting week one way or another, we've seen the Murdoch's up in front of the Commons Select Committee along with their former editor Rebeka Brooks to answer questions about phone hacking, why does this whole episode smack of chickens coming home to roost?

For the past three years or so the press have been constantly kicking the ball into an empty net regarding the MP's expenses, only now for most of them to be hoist on their own petard and finding themselves investigated by Knacker of the Yard, (mind you old Knacker himself is in the frame too). In my personal view, the press pretty much deserve everything that is about to be done to them, perhaps after it is all over we will have responsible politicians that make the right decisions on behalf of us all, and a press corp that reports on the things that matter instead of tittle tattle and what goes on behind closed doors between consenting adults?

Well I can hope I suppose!!

But while all this has been going on, and dear old auntie BBC has been getting her 40 deniers in a twist, there have been much more important issues raising their heads just across the channel.

I've been writing for months now about the catastrophe that is likely to befall the Eurozone. The BBC and its leftie cronies have more or less ignored what has been going on, after all its much more fun to kick the Murdoch press to death. But in the meantime, the Greek tragedy has continued, with the EU finally deciding to back yet another bail out for a country who has a debt the equivalent of just shy of twice everything it produces. The most recent estimate is that the figure is 180% of GDP, in terms that most of us can understand it means that if you add up the entire output of a country, manufacturing, service industry, banking, investments etc etc, you get a figure known as the Gross Domestic Product or GDP. In better times debt levels of perhaps 30-40% of GDP were thought to be manageable. At the end of the Conservative Government in 1997 our debt was falling rapidly heading for 25%. Gordon Brown through his profligate spending forced ours up to very nearly 50% of GDP and his legacy will mean that our debt will continue to rise to about 70% of GDP before falling back over the next 5 years or so.

Greece has a debt of 180% of GDP, basically it is bankrupt, kaput, finished, but the EU commissars who still dream of a united Federal Europe can't or won't see it collapse, instead it will continue to pump money into the stricken economy in a vain attempt to prevent the great Euro experiment from collapsing in a heap.

I listened intently to Daniel Hannan MEP and eurosceptic on radio five live this week, his analysis mirrors my own, the Europe experiment is over. The stricken countries like Greece, Ireland, Portugal, Spain and now Italy must be allowed to free themselves from a currency dominated by France and Germany, his solution, and quite a novel one at that, is that Germany and France should leave the Euro and revert back to the Deutchmark and the Franc (or to a separate common currency) while the other poorer countries are allowed to devalue the Euro, cut interest rates and kick start their economies.

The current situation is rather like having a ship with a massive hole below the waterline, no matter how fast you bail it out, you are fighting a losing battle. Another analogy I heard today was this "When King Phillip of Spain died his devoted and slightly mad wife refused to accept the situation and slept next to the decaying corpse for three whole years, take heed Greece!!!"

However, on the bright side, it appears that my mate George has managed to keep us out of the latest debacle, and if the Eurozone collapses, it will give Cameron all the ammunition he needs to re-negotiate our relationship with Europe, and once again return to the "Common Market" which after all was what we voted to join, and extricate us from this European federal experiment which has so spectacularly failed.

We can once again take control of our borders, our laws, our taxation, our spending and our way of life, without the constant interference of unelected bureaucrats from across the water.

One for the old guys.

This last weekend saw the annual Open Golf Championship played out over the magnificent links at Royal St. Georges Golf Club, Sandwich, Kent.

As is usually the case, the great British weather played a huge part in proceedings with all four seasons coming and going within a few minutes, at one time on Sunday huge raindrops like goose eggs pelted down, followed a few seconds later by bright sunshine, the only consistent factor was the 20-30 mph winds that blew across the course all week.

To emerge as the Champion Golfer of the year in conditions such as those takes a rare talent, fortitude, a cool head, and a fair slice of luck. Darren Clarke has all the talent in the world, keeps a cool head under pressure, is perhaps more resilient than any other player on the tour, and admitted that he had his fair slice of luck too. Starting early on Thursday and late on Friday he managed to avoid the worst of the rain, although his 69 on Saturday in pretty dire conditions must have been the round of his life, then yesterday when it all could have fallen apart he played superbly, under the most enormous pressure to claim the Old Claret Jug.

Darren Clarke is a great guy, he has been through an awful lot in his life, his form has deserted him for years on end and he more or less took five years out of his career in the prime of his life to help his wife, in vain as it turned out, to fight breast cancer. He deserves every bit of the adulation that will come his way over the next weeks and months.

But what is really special in my view was the manner of his victory, he doesn’t use the course as his own personal spittoon like the un-missed Tiger Woods, he doesn’t complain about the weather like his young Irish protégé Rory Mcilroy, he doesn’t look like the world will cave in when he misses a putt like the eternally grumpy Sergio Garcia, he plays with a smile on his lips, and a twinkle in his eye, just like the late great Seve Ballesteros who lost his own fight with cancer a few months ago.

Darren like most of us Sunday golfers likes a glass of Red or a pint of Guinness, he knows his way around a menu, his parties are legendary. He generally avoids the gym like the plague, and is well known for having a quiet puff whilst stood on the tee sharing an off colour joke with his playing partners. I have not heard one person offer any form of criticism of Darren Clarke as a golfer or as a human being. The spokesman for the R&A said yesterday that golf is a game of skill and strategy, it is not always the strongest or fittest that come out on top.

So the much vaunted challenge from the world’s top ranked players failed to materialise, Luke Donald and Lee Westwood failed to make the cut, Mcilroy just made it but finished well back in the pack, Kaymer similarly never put in a meaningful blow on Sunday. It was left to the old guys Clarke, Mickelson, and Bjorn to show the flat stomachs how to play when the going gets tough; the only young pretender to show was Dustin Johnson from the USA who briefly threatened before succumbing to the treacherous par 5 14^th.

So Darren Clarke will show the world how to be a champion with humility and good grace, I predict that he will show the world how to celebrate as well, he is supposed to be playing in the Irish Open on Thursday next week, he said today that he’ll play if he sobers up in time, that’s my sort of golfer!!

Look out we're back

Well here it is! After a short summer recess, Shepton in Blue is back and better than ever (well I guess you'll be the judge of that).

What to write about now I'm back? Red Ed and his inability to lead Labour out of the wilderness, Nick Clegg and the rapidly disappearing Lib Dems, phone hacking and the demise of the Screws of the World, the Accommodation review at MDC or the crisis in the Euro mmmmmmmmmmmmmmm!!!

I think I'll start with the Euro crisis, I wrote some months ago about Alistair Darling running off to Brussels and signing us up to the European stability package, with George Osborne warning him not to do it, well after weeks of denials from Darling, Milliband, Balls et al, the truth finally came out last week when a freedom of information request revealed that Osborne had indeed demanded that Darling did not sign us up to long term financial commitments after Labour had lost the election but before the new government was in place. Darling completely ignored this and committed us to £billions of support for the beleaguered Euro even though we are not part of the wretched single currency.

Cameron has now negotiated us out of that deal, but that won't happen until 2015 and by then we will have stumped up many billions of pounds in financial aid, I said at the time that Darling should hold his head in shame, he ought to be up in front the beak with all his fellow expenses fiddlers, treason wouldn't be too much of an exaggeration.

It now appears that Portugal may well go the same way a Ireland and Greece, with Spain not far behind, and thanks to Darling and his cronies we are now mixed up in the whole sorry mess. If that isn't enough, we then get Balls and Milliband sounding like a stuck record with their "too deep and too fast" mantra regarding the cuts, this sorry pair backed up by their leftie friends in the BBC, force this diet of negativity down everyone's throats at every opportunity, the new BBC chairman Chris Patten has already said as much and intends to change it. The last thing this country needs is constant negative carping by the discredited Nu Labour luvvies, a diet comprehensively swallowed by our local left wing apologist Chris Inchley.

 The fact is that the coalition government have succeeded in preventing this country going down the Swanee alongside Ireland and Greece, the economy is growing and being re-balanced with jobs being created in the private sector at a greater rate than they are being lost in the public sector, I'd rather the whole lot just said thank you for getting us out of the mire and then shut up for ever.