Paul Danon

• Mr Cameron was on Andrew Marr and I wrote to him: “You seem to acquiesce in a 26-nation [European Union] treaty, yet isn’t there a case for a legal challenge to the effect that such an agreement undermines the genuine union-wide treaties? Imagine what would happen if we and the other nine non-euro countries set up some sort of special structure. If you can’t challenge a 26-nation treaty, can you at least challenge the use of EU-facilities to run it?”
• Top people’s pay is a current issue and it’s grotesque to hear Marxist talk from Tory lips. The government’s mission is to explain to people that enterprise works best when left alone. Government, by contrast, needs hawk-like scrutiny, and this includes government-supported banks.
• The Guardian highlights Edge, an intellectual website. It is, of course, hopelessly PC and right-on, but it belongs up there with TED. A useful index to such sites is Arts & Letters Daily.
• The Edge’s John Brockman has published essays on the internet’s impact. The synopsis suggests that the authors refreshingly avoided the irritatingly predictable “Gosh, isn’t all this technology complicated; my grandchildren have to show me how to work the remote control; give me an old-style book read by hurricane-lamp any day,” ignorant timewasting posing self-regarding Luddite rubbish.
• The Observer preaches banker-bashing: “Yet shareholders are already free to influence decisions. The fact that they choose not to do so is itself a manifestation of such freedom. Interference is deeply illiberal. If you must punish the rich, tax them (which of course you already do). Whatever punitive moves you take against the innocent rich, they’ll go abroad to where the régime is liberal and what will you tell the NHS then when you have to cut its budget?”
• Labour’s Liam Byrne reportedly wants a link between what you put into the welfare-system and what you get out. However, this turns welfare into a sort of nationalised piggy-bank (and we already have one of those). Welfare should, rather, be what you get when you’ve either not contributed anything or have exhausted your savings and insurance-provision.
• Mr John Redwood MP gets letters from people asking why they should scrimp and save when profligate folk get paid benefits from their taxes. I chip in.

Imagine the thoughts of a public figure (politician or prelate) as they prepare a new-year message. Such people ought to know the state of the nation better than anyone, having as they do access to information denied the rest of us. Both prime minister and archbishop know that matters are dire: socially, economically and morally.

The liberalism introduced in the 1960s has undermined the family and other social structures, increasing crime and the welfare-burden. The state hasn’t just invaded private life but has allowed money to be debased and debt to grow wildly. Commerce inflames ordinary people’s appetites, making them tense, avaricious and inclined to overspend.

That social policy has come home to roost, just as the economic one has. One can only foresee more family-breakdown, more unrest and worse economic circumstances. The politicians’ answers are vague and unhelpful. We’re all in this together, our society must become big, we need to look on the bright side. We must both pay-down our debts and spend our way out of recession.

The public figure writing his message will know all this, and probably more. Global politics are precarious, with instability in the Arab world, Afghanistan grinding on, a possible fight between Israel and Iran, and perhaps even another Falklands-war.

The bishop or politician may think: “If I talk to them about all that stuff, and about the gruesome prognosis, I’ll only make the problem worse. Pessimistic words could make people despondent, fearful and/or angry. I know. I’ll change the subject and write, instead, about some trivial sign of hope which I witnessed during the past year. I can also write about some transient future event which might take people’s minds off things.”

There will however come a time when politicians can no longer sweet-talk us into thinking things can only get better. Furthermore, prospects really are bleak. Former social mores are now dismissed as taboos. Family-breakdown has scarred not just the couples but their children and grandchildren. And a radically broken economy cannot be fixed by more money-printing and debt.

Our leaders have a greater duty than telling us what we want to hear. Elected politicians owe their voters the truth; religious leaders must offer us not just words of comfort but means of grace.

The archbishop of York writes on bankers’ bonuses and I comment: “If the archbishop knows which high-earning bankers caused the crisis, will he report them to the authorities? And does he concede that government played any part? The priority for his church seems to be relative (rather than absolute) poverty. We could thus all get richer but the Church of England would still complain. Indeed, we have all got richer yet there seems to be no thanksgiving to God but marxian analysis. His ‘people and justice must be at the centre of all decision-making’ seems good at first, but someone even more important is missing; the one who is born to us today.”

The headline-writer on the archbishop of Westminster’s seasonal piece suggests that Christianity is alive and well; here I come: “Christians are persecuted and the faith has been elbowed out of public life. Lapsation is rife and vocations sparse. Religious congregations have closed and parishes are closing. The nation’s law strays increasingly further from God’s law and, in the churches themselves, the message of salvation is replaced with the social gospel. Marriage declines, abortion and birth-control are widespread, obscenity and blasphemy abound. I understand a damage-limitation strategy which makes out that the church is still a force in the land, Christianity our core-culture, but the evidence makes such a pitch hollow and unbelievable. This isn’t the time for self-congratulatory smugness but for the voice of one crying in the wilderness.”

Mr Tom Chivers writes in praise of Christ, to which I add: “Others have taught charity, but central to our Lord’s message is his own divinity. He said that he, alone, was the way, his the only truth. None can come to God except through him, and we must eat his body and drink his blood to have life in us. He also founded just one church, outside which there’s no salvation. His teachings on charity didn’t get him into trouble (and killed); his claims to divinity did. He then proceeded to give his greatest teaching from the cross and through what happened next. Christ gives us no opportunity to dismiss him as a mere philosopher of a kind of extreme altruism, nor as a wet. He was very rude about those with whom he disagreed, and spoke of judgement. We leave him snuggled in the manger at our peril.”

I wonder if any of the (non-UK) 26 member-governments’ constitutions forbids the placing of any institution and/or person above the law. The conclusion of a treaty without the participation of all 27 member-states may be against the union’s law. The treaty’s extent could mean that some member-states would have to hold referenda on it.

With the European economy on the brink (and gold inexplicably devaluing), and with the death of Christopher Hitchens, the atheist writer, it’s appropriate that the British prime minister should be upstaging the archbishop of Canterbury and reminding us of our Christian roots.

Putting aside whether the summer’s riots could be explained sociologically, deprivation is often accompanied by breakdown in mores. The supposed liberation from prudish ways has increased illegitimacy (itself often ending in abortion), fuelled divorce, spread disease and debased the culture. If we were once Christian, we ain’t now.

Assuming that the government considers our religious heritage to be a desirable one (and not just of historic interest), we should hope soon to see proposals for laws to stop divorce, ban obscenity, promote chastity and shut the shops on Sundays again.

This blog has previously carried posts with headlines like Cameron fails, Time for an election and PM worse than Ted Heath. We now realise that these posts were published in error and Mr Cameron is, in fact, a greater leader than Churchill.

This newly-released video is not a spoof. It points out that some of the eurozone-countries’ former currencies will cease to be legal tender in February, which could be just when they’re being reintroduced.

Every columnist and blogger wants you to think that the piece that you are currently reading is the most significant, momentous commentary on the global situation ever, and I am no exception. Prophets of doom must keep their I-told-you-sos up to date, just in case one day the apocalypse they foretell actually comes true.

Eurozone countries are shy about propping-up their own currency, but they’re happy to lend money to the IMF which the IMF can then lend them! More shockingly, major governments’ treasuries have just underwritten the world’s banks with liquidity that’s probably not backed by gold. I, for one, have never recently heard such pessimism from a governing (rather than opposition) politician as from the French president.

And it spreads beyond Europe. Not only do we have the left in tents outside the world’s bourses, but Col Gaddafi was reportedly planning a pan-Arab currency based on gold. Ron Paul, who would abolish the Fed, is ignored. Iran loots our embassy and Israel obliquely threatens to hit its nuclear labs. A vicar warns that Christianity’s downfall could also be Europe’s, yet he’s too late; the church is in eclipse and western civilisation’s in hock to the banks.

18 months in and the coalition is failing. Unemployment is up, inflation high, growth down, and they’re going to miss their deficit-reduction target by a year. Promises of repatriation of powers from Europe are hollow. The government won’t listen to the people on an EU-referendum, its policies are inflating energy-prices, and strikes loom.

The Tories must now turn to their LibDem socialist partners and point out that merely continuing Labour’s policies isn’t working. Whatever ideology and political expedient may dictate, you can’t tax, spend or borrow your way out of a slump. When things get really bad, the remedy is always the same one as the IMF/EU is now imposing on club-Med and as it imposed on us in the 70s.

As well as being a suitable chastisement for wasteful politicians, a small state is also the recipe for growth. After convincing the electorate that it was Labour without Gordon Brown, the government’s next communication-task before 2015 is to persuade voters that, like a family economising and paying-off debt, a government must live within its means.

Civitas calls for an industrial bank. I comment: “Another quango/state-backed bank? No thanks. Just cut taxes. It takes no time and needs no setting-up and no potentially corrupt bosses. Tax-cuts put money straight into people’s pockets and, if those people are poor, they’re likely to spend it, thus generating demand. Politicians must put their parties’ interests aside and resist the temptation of voter-bribing. The best inducement to returning a government would actually be economic growth, which can’t be achieved by borrowing or QE, but can be achieved by letting us keep more of our own money.”

Ashtray containing assortment of slightly dodgy foreign coins. Several careful owners. Any reasonable offer considered. Must dispose of very quickly.