Tag: Middle East

HIKE INCOME TAX FOR THE CARE CRISIS?

 

 

THE UNMENTIONABLE TAX INCREASE.

An aide to former Prime Minister David Cameron has admitted that the promise not to increase income tax, VAT or national insurance was made to fill a gap in a stream of policy announcements before the last General Election.

Nevertheless increasing income tax has become an unmentionable subject even for Jeremy Corbyn who demands instead that the planned cut in Corporation Tax be scrapped in order to cope with the mounting crisis in elderly care.

The government are not handling the problem well. It was not even mentioned in the Autumn Statement. Now we see ambulances queueing outside hospitals because elderly people can’t be discharged. That’s because there are no home care packages for them. That’s because councils can’t afford them or are running out of private providers who say Town Halls can’t give them an economic rate. That’s because of government cuts.

Now in a panic local authorities are going to be allowed to raise council tax by an extra 2% in each of the next two years, but not in 2019-20 when the Local Government Association reckon the social care gap will rise from its current figure of £1.3bn to £2.6bn. Presumably by then the whole issue will have been rethought and refunded.

But even this panic measure by the government will help the south more than the north because of its low council tax base. The top three beneficiaries are Surrey, Kent and Essex whilst Manchester and Liverpool are in the bottom ten. This presumes that the councillors will automatically levy the extra precept. They are expected to because there are no metropolitan borough elections next year. However there are mayoral contests in Liverpool and Manchester City Regions.

One wonders whether Corbyn’s Labour Party might be the first to break cover and support income tax increases to deal with the growing crisis in elderly care.

BRUTAL TRUTH IN THE MIDDLE EAST.

The policy of using western influence to remove brutal dictators in the Middle East and North Africa has long been discredited. In the rubble of Aleppo we see its nadir. Saddam Hussein in Iraq, Mubarak in Egypt and Gaddafi in Libya were all removed. As a consequence their countries are riddled with Islamic extremists even worse than them.

Assad in Syria refused to go, found an ally in Russia, and seems to be prepared bludgeon his people into submission to remain in charge.

The West has lurched from bungling interference to incompetence, certainly in respect of Syria. We encouraged moderate rebels to revolt against Assad, then didn’t back them up properly as they became infiltrated by extremists. What help we did give allows Russia to suggest we are partly backing Islamist extremists against the official government of a country in Syria whilst doing the opposite in Iraq.

All this could have a major effect on the world power balance. Russia is economically weak but has a clear, if brutal, view of its own interests. China grows more powerful and assertive in the Pacific. America is in a state of uncertainty over Trump and the European Union is in great danger of collapsing in a wave of populism.

Follow me at www.jimhancock.co.uk

 

 

 

 

A VORTEX OF VIOLENCE OR LONG TERM REMEDIES

 

We may have to live with terrorism for generations but there are things that can be done to try and avoid us getting into the vortex of violence that the Parisian madmen want us to descend into.

It is not in any way to give a scintilla of justification to what happened in Paris to suggest that the massacre has historic links to Britain and France’s colonial past. History is a rolling story with one event linked to another. In the 1920s our two countries carved up the Middle East with no regard to the local Arab interest. Britain promised a homeland for the Jews whilst promising to protect the interests of the Palestinian Arabs.

When the colonial era ended and the Arabs became responsible for governing the Middle East themselves we saw the setting up of military dictatorships and even more significantly the hoarding of the vast oil wealth of the region in the hands of a few. If that money had been fairly distributed across the region, it might now have been an area of prosperity. Instead unemployment and instability has created a sense of anger and hopelessness on which terrorism has fed.

The last chapter of the recent history of the Middle East saw the western powers returning to remove the military dictators who’s only virtue was to keep a lid on the festering divisions. Following the removal of Gaddafi and Saddam Hussein all hell has broken loose. I’m not a spokesman for the Stop The War coalition who issued a tweet (subsequently repudiated) saying we were reaping the whirlwind, however it is true. But “we” includes not just western countries who made bad choices in the Middle East, but greedy oil sheiks and religious fanatics who ought to know that the true basis of both Christianity and Islam is to love thy neighbour and do good.

So what is to be done now? In the short term ISIL’s territory has to be conquered by local troops backed up by western air support. But that won’t be the end of them, there a re plenty of failed states where they will emerge again unless fundamental issues are resolved in the region. The most important is better wealth distribution. Then comes some really controversial changes. The creation of Palestine and Kurdistan (the least they deserve for being the only effective troops fighting ISIS) as nation states and possible boundary changes to ease Sunni and Shia tensions.

At home a massive “not in my name” demonstration by our British Muslim colleagues would help ease the worrying rise of entirely unjustified Islamaphobia. The Chancellor next week should protect funds for community policing. It is the height of folly to damage that part of the police service which is often the first to detect extremists. And finally the Prime Minister needs to be careful to avoid gloating when we, sometimes necessarily, execute terrorists without trial. His demeanour in announcing the death of Jihaddi John was in marked contrast to the remarks of some of the people who’d actually had relatives beheaded by the ghastly murderer.

By language and deed we must not be goaded into the vortex of violence.

 

JE SUIS CHARLIE,BUT…..

..

 

The crazy logic of the people who gunned down the staff of Charlie Hebdo is that it will bring nearer the day of a holy war between the West and the Caliphate.

As the shock and grief continues, we have to ask ourselves if that day is getting nearer.

 

It seems unbelievable in this hi tech 21st century world that I should be writing in language more appropriate to the age of the Crusades or the sixteenth century when the Ottoman Empire was at the gates of Vienna. More poignantly we can go back to 732 when the Umayyed Caliphate nearly took Poitiers in the centre of France during the incredible early expansion of Islam.

 

At the moment the conflict does not take the form of armies confronting each other. The British and American experience in Afghanistan and Iraq has ended that for now. We prefer drones, air strikes and arming the Kurds to boots on the ground.

 

The dreadful events in France have left us in a very dangerous position. Islamophobia and anti semitism are on the rise, our civil liberties are under pressure, and parties of the right are gaining support. Meanwhile the causes of all this are hardly mentioned.

They are in no particular order, the post World War One colonial settlement in the Middle East; the grossly unfair distribution of oil wealth that should have benefited all the people of the region; our ignorance of the complexities of the Middle East when we intervened militarily; the mindset of some Muslims that their religion and way of life should be imposed on all of us and above all our failure to deal with the plight of the Palestinians. Barrack Osama should use the remaining years of his presidency, when he is less beholden to the powerful Jewish lobby in America, to achieve a two state solution for Israel and Palestine.

 

Of course that is very difficult to achieve, but it could be the beginning of unwinding the mounting crisis between the West and elements of Islam. If the terrorists could no longer point to the plight of the Palestinians, then one of the major causes of tension would be ameliorated. This might then lead to a waning of real and tacit support for terrorism upon which organisations like ISIS and Al -Qaeda rely.

 

Finally let me go back to the title of this blog and my thoughts on publications like Charlie Hebdo. Whilst we must all defend free speech, we must recognise that it is not absolute in France or here. There are laws curbing racial hatred and obscenity. Much more widely people of a religious belief are entitled to be offended and angered by blatant mockery of Muhammed or Jesus. Emphatically it does not entitle them to kill or intimidate those that publish such material, but we must acknowledge its effect on the heightened tension we are all feeling.

THE LONG LEGACY OF WORLD WAR ONE

100 years ago the first shots were being fired in the First World War. At the end of it the Ottoman Empire was split up into the states that are involved in the awful carnage that we are seeing every night on our TV screens.

 

The situation is serious and is already affecting us here. My colleague Michael Taylor has addressed the street tension in Manchester over the Gaza issue in his Downtown blog. 500 people from Britain have gone to the Syrian civil war. Some may return to try and practise jihad on our streets. On the business front the fragile recovery could be reversed by more general war in the Middle East and interruption of fuel supplies.

 

There have been many Middle East crises before. This one has two new characteristics. Firstly social media is centre stage in the propaganda and recruitment war. Everything is accelerated. Rumours and lies rub shoulders with the truth and people choose what to believe and what determines their action. Secondly the United States is largely absent. After the unwise involvement of George Bush we now have the isolationism of President Obama. The decision to pivot American foreign policy towards the Pacific might have had a certain logic to it when Obama took office. However as the only world super power you take your eyes off the Middle East and Russia at your peril.

 

There is undoubtedly a paradox in United States involvement in the Middle East. On the one hand it is the hated symbol of Western imperialism and ultimate defender of Israel. On the other hand it retains massive military power and the potential to bring people together (The Camp David Accords between Egypt and Israel in 1978).

 

The situation is so bloody and complex that the likelihood is that the Middle East will remain a running sore for decades to come. There may be ceasefires and short term agreements but the heady mix of vast economic disparity among the people, religious fanaticism and unresolved issues of national identity may be too difficult to resolve.

 

In 1919 the world was a different place. One set of Empires: Austria-Hungary, Germany, Russia and Ottoman Turkey were replaced by another set: Britain and France with the United States beginning to play a role.

 

Lloyd George, Clemenceau and President Wilson met in Paris without the chatter of social media and 24 hour news channels and carved up the Middle East and Africa. Although the superiority of the white man was beginning to be challenged, the western powers still called the shots and huge mistakes were made.

 

It was perhaps regrettable that T.E Lawrence’s idea for a Greater Arabia was not adopted. The secret of the Ottoman Empire was to govern lightly by collecting the taxes but letting local Sunni and Shia leaders run their areas.

 

The Kurds should have been given their own state and it goes without saying more thought should have been given to the implications for the Palestinians of the Balfour Declaration that set in train the creation of Israel.

 

The Palestinian issue is almost intractable but ultimately could a bargain be struck whereby Israel and its settlers withdraw to the pre-1967 borders in return for a demilitarised Palestinian state being set up in the West Bank and Gaza? Jerusalem should become an international city under the control of the United Nations with freedom of worship for all faiths.

 

It is easy to write such a proposal and it will offend many but the alternative seems to be continuing misery for the Palestinians and insecurity for the Israelis.