It was eight years ago today that I started this website – it seems a world away from now as we look to another new year with, mostly, very different faces among the world’s leaders.

I had recently come out of hospital after a life-threatening illness and some of the events of October and November passed me by. I had been an excited follower of Barrack Obama’s campaign for the American presidency and I had heard some news of things going wrong with the international banking system. I think, if I remember correctly, that I was feeling optimistic about the future. Then I suffered a major brain haemorrhage that took me away from current affairs until around the time that I started to write these pages.

Eight years on, I’m now completely recovered but I wish I could say the same about the world as we leave 2016 for a worrying 2017.

So who were our leaders in 2008? I was surprised to see just how different things were then. Take a look.

Well, yes, all seemed possible when Barrack Obama was elected president and we shall miss him when he stands down in just three weeks time. If the Republicans in Congress hadn’t set out to block his every move, we’d have had more of his legacy than Obamacare, Marriage Equality,  the Paris climate change summit, the Iran nuclear deal, the death of Osama bin Laden, and that sense of the  world’s strongest country being in the hands of a civilised, benign and intelligent progressive. Congress, to its eternal shame, consistently blocked his attempts at gun reform and at closing the infamous Guantanamo Bay.  He knew what he wanted as far as America’s wars were concerned and stuck to his principles, mostly, over limiting American army ‘boots on the ground’ even if the results were the rise of ISIS, the tragedy of Syria and the rise and rise of those frightening drones. In spite of the down bits, I shall be sorry to see him go.

He may have been a grumpy old thing but Gordon Brown was a great deal more than just a safe pair of hands when he succeeded Tony Blair as prime minister of the United Kingdom. Britain doesn’t like to admit it these days but  without Mr Brown at the helm when the great 2008 financial crash occurred,  Britain’s  economy could have gone through the floor with catastrophic results for employment, industry and what was then  hopeful signs in the country’s health and education systems. Well, he was chucked out and, yes, the rest is history. I wonder how many people would have voted him out if they could see where we are today.

The political alternative for Britain in 2008 was the pleasant enough but hopelessly upper class David Cameron whose idealism and cynicism was mostly held  in equal balance due to his posh debating society view of serious issues. In the end he was always going to be alright, no matter what happened to the rest of us.

There was a new kid on Britain’s political block in those days – the fresh-faced, bright-eyed and new-sounding Liberal-democrat leader, Nick Clegg.  Britain, in optimistic mood, thought for a time that he would be a genuine dose of fresh air for a country too long governed by the two major parties. It didn’t quite work out that way but, for a moment, he sounded like a nice British Barrack Obama.

There may have been some fresh smiling faces at the top of the West’s political parties, but it was a harsh and brutal world out there in 2008. No single figure haunted our imaginations more than the head of that murderous organisation Al Qaeda, whose shadow darkened all our lives with its members’ policy of mass murder in their blasphemous rewriting of the great faith of Islam.

Other leaders who sat pretty on the horrors of their regimes in 2008 were also perverters of Islam – Muammar Gaddafi of Libya and Bashar al-Assad of Syria. It seemed, back then, that they would be the next candidates to fall, when early signs of the 2011 Arab Spring painted these men as political dinosaurs. If only. Libya got shot of Gaddafi but it is now in chaos and, well, Syria, with Assad still stuck to its boots like a piece of old sticky tape,  has become the biggest tragedy since the Second World War.

Iran didn’t feel much better in 2008 under the premiership of the wild-eyed and wild-mannered Mahmoud Ahmadinejad who managed to remain leader in spite of, or because of, his indifference to human rights,  international relations, diplomacy or the dire economic consequences of his ultra conservative political agenda. People have forgotten how big a deal Obama’s  2016 Iran Nuclear Deal actually was. Please take note President-elect Trump.

In 2008, unlike most other Middle Eastern governments, Israel and the Palestinian Authority were being led by two intelligent, diplomatic and peace-loving men in Salam Fayyad of the P.A. and much-missed (and now disgraced) Ehud Olmert of Israel. When chaos was looming elsewhere in that region, there were reasons for hope in these tow prime ministers negotiating skills but, as we now know, their efforts led nowhere.

Meanwhile China was basking in the faint light of Paramount Leader Hu Jintao who, in spite of the financial catastrophes elsewhere, succeeded in building up the Chinese economy to such an extent that it was only time before we all got to realise that soon China was going to be the world’s next economic super power. It was he who managed to build the economy without releasing his government’s tight hold on repressing any possible social liberalisation.  China’s current Paramount Leader,  Ji Xinping is a bit nastier, just as economically savvy and just as careful not to give away many civil liberties but he’s far better than his rather dull predecessor at giving us a smiling face.

There was some hope too in 2008, in an uncaring kind of way, that the Eternal Leader of North Korea, Kim Jong Il,  might have been not long for this world. Eternity in North Korean leaders, luckily, isn’t forever but, those optimists who thought that he might be replaced sooner rather than later by a younger, more liberal and West-friendly Eternal Leader, were to be sadly disappointed by an even worse example of the Korean Democratic People’s Party, unelected ruling dynasty.

And that leaves Europe – or rather the European Union. It might not have been all sweetness and light in the EU in 2008 but, in those days, we were all in it together. Germany and France leading the way, as usual, under chancellor Angela Merkel and President Nicolas Sarkozy, with Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi, the colourful but ineffectual joker  having fun on the side, and prime minister Gordon Brown,  ideally suited to be Britain’s semi-detached representative who was loving it all really.  Who would’ve guessed? Whose worst nightmare really imagined BREXIT? Well, not me. Looking at this picture now, I feel quite nostalgic for those days when we thought Sarkozy and Merkel were heartless right-wingers and that things couldn’t get any worse.

Who would’ve thought too that the only leader that can claim to represent the West’s much strived-for liberal democracies, would be the perennial Angela Merkel? The way things are going in the USA and in Europe, we might all hope that she might one day become our very own  Eternal Leader.

Oh yes, I almost forgot… HAPPY NEW YEAR everyone!

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The latest example of David Cameron’s negotiating skills now isolates us from our major economic partners and doesn’t get him the let-out clause he wanted for the City of London. It will please his euro-sceptic back-bench MPs but wobble his coalition with the Liberal Democrats. I wonder if he really did mean to use the British veto or whether he tumbled into it when he couldn’t keep his place at Europe’s top table. It will be embarrassing no matter what he says if Britain is the only country (with the possibility of only Hungary joining it) out of the 27 members of the EU not to be seen trying to help Europe in its hour of trouble. Europe’s problems are Britain’s problems so walking out will not be good for Britain.

In reality President Sarkozy pulled the plug on David Cameron when the British Prime Minister stuck out for but failed to win his concessions on financial regulations in the City of London. The other European nations may well not have reached a solution yet over the Eurozone crisis but Britain has begun a dangerous journey away from its partners on a road to somewhere no one can predict. A road that David Cameron’s diplomatic, historical and political inadequacies make particularly perilous.

Good luck UK – you’re out in the cold now.

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Yes, I know about the Euro crisis, I know that the “leaders”  of the Eurozone, Germany’s Angela Merkel and France’s Nicolas Sarkozy can’t quite agree yet on what to do about the currency crisis, I know too that I am not an economist but anyone with eyes to see can see that the British Prime Minister, David Cameron, is turning into the invisible man.

He has his problems not just with the new European leaders but also with the grumpiest and nastiest members of his own party, the Conservatives. In case you had forgotten, Europe is the great unmentionable as far as recent Conservative Party leaders are concerned. Divisions over Europe, split John Major’s government and then all those leaders that came and went quickly before nice Mr Cameron slid into the hot seat. Until recently Conservative etiquete was a bit like Basil Fawlty’s  “don’t mention the War” gag. Talk about anything else but don’t mention the fact that the party is riven down the middle on this issue. It is even worse for poor David because of his role as leader of a Coalition with the bright-eyed European enthusiasts, the Liberal Democrats keeping him in power. So once again the Conservatives are damned if they do and damned if they don’t over Europe.

In the meanwhile, France and Germany take the centre stage and, when all this money stuff is sorted – which will be sooner than many people predict – Europe will begin to recover and to turn itself into a shiny new organisation without taking much notice of that strangely awkward man standing in the background. I hope Britain won’t regret a missed opportunity to avoid becoming a sleepy back-water.

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Things are moving at a pace in Greece today and, since I wrote this blog, everything has changed and the referendum has been called off….well, everything has changed except for my opinion as expressed below. Good luck George, you are still my hero of the week.

Some of his fellow countrymen sneeringly call him Jeffrey because he was educated in America and doesn’t look a bit like Aristotle Onassis or the more usual type of the powerful modern Greek oligarch. George Papandreou,  the much put upon Greek Prime Minister is a small man with a lot of enemies. if I were looking for a nickname for him I wouldn’t call him Jeffrey, David is more appropriate. Not David, as in our Dave, the confused but optimistic British Prime Minister, but more like the boy David, the slayer of the giant Goliath. This new David may not actually kill the twin-Janus-headed giant that is Europe’s centre of power, the self-hating Merkel-Sarkozy monster. Poor little George Papandreou, we all thought, he hadn’t got a chance – perilously vulnerable in his own parliament, criticised by his own people, mercilessly bullied by the Germans and the French and sneered at by the British Conservative Party, he has confounded us all with his bravery and charm with this sudden and unexpected call for a referendum that will ask the Greek people what they want. You know what, the so-called cradle of democracy is actually going to consult the people and listen to their voices and then act on their decision democratically.

Ouch! thought Angela Merkel, ouch! thought Nicolas Sarkoy, we are meant to be running this show. So what’s going on?  thought David Cameron, no one ever tells me anything. Apparently, he found out in the end by watching the television news.

It appears that George Papandreou has done the only thing left for him to do, ignore his enemies at home and abroad and, if he survives, put his future into the hands of the people. It is up to the Greek population to decide if they want to remain in the Eurozone and bite the bullet of deficit austerity or hurtle their country into deeper chaos. A chaos, it has to be remembered, inflicted on them by the usual villains,  corrupt financiers and politicians that have been bleeding the country for decades. There will be no easy solution but,  call me old-fashioned,  I still like the idea of democracy even if it is now unfashionable in the higher echelons of the European Union.

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It must be very annoying getting pulled off your flight home just when you were about to leave especially if you are being arrested for a crime you didn’t commit and when you are accustomed to getting your own way. Maybe Monsieur Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the managing-director of the International Monetary Fund, is innocent of the crime – the attempted rape and sexual assault of a chamber maid in his New York hotel suite.

The New York police must be pretty sure of their case after the public humiliation of such an important man in the world of international finance at a time when the IMF is involved in the urgent financial crisis in several failing European economies.

Presuming that the chamber maid is telling the truth, it is too vivid an image to ignore and, maybe, too unsurprizing, that a rich, powerful roundly-middle-aged banker could come rushing naked out of his bathroom and try to have his way with whoever might have been unfortunate enough to be the wrong girl in the wrong place at that moment.

He wouldn’t be the first banker to think that he could get away with anything.

Monsieur Strauss-Kahn may well be innocent, as I suggest, and the crime of attempted rape and sexual assault is a serious one so we shouldn’t jump to conclusions. It is not the same as serial adultery, a reputation for being “pushy” in his sexual advances or just being French.

Certainly being a Frenchman comes with a certain set of stereotypes in the area of marital fidelity and sexual athleticism but we should be careful before we regard this alleged crime in a luxury New York hotel, as just another example of gallic laissez-faire.

Maybe the man is innocent, maybe he was just being a bit too “pushy,” maybe he thought all women  find him irresistible or, maybe, he is guilty as accused of a totally unacceptable crime. Whatever the outcome in the case, we have all been allowed to exercise our prejudices about bankers, Frenchmen, middle-aged men, fat men, rich men and politicians. Monsieur Strauss-Kahn had been the favourite in next year’s French presidential elections. His “charm” might be a tad tarnished after this and the French, God help them, may have to settle for another term with the highly resistible, Nicolas Sarkozy.

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“Dave, darling,” said Sam whilst they were relaxing on the sofa looking at holiday brochures.
“Yes, my sweet,” he replied without looking up from “Sunshine Tours Of North Africa.”
‘Well, Dave, I was just thinking. You know how this business in Libya has all started to go wrong? I saw a picture in a magazine of this Pro-Gaddafi supporter wearing a green scarf and he looked very determined and it made me think that you might not win this one.”
“I suppose so, sweetest, but who knows what will happen there.”
“I had an idea, that’s all. It’s probably silly.”
“Nonsense Sam, you are the cleverest person I know.”

“Awww, thanks Dave. Well, what about this? You know how we have sent all those expensive planes and missiles and things to try and beat Mr Gaddafi and how it just doesn’t seem to be getting anywhere and now everyone in Britain thinks it was a mistake?”
“Well get to the point, my love.”
“OK. I was looking at the pictures in the papers with that Muslim woman being arrested in Paris for wearing a scarf and I just wondered if we couldn’t use that as a clever way of getting rid of Gaddafi. You know how you and Mr Sarkozy have been left all on your own over Libya, well, why not have a word with him about my idea.”

“Ah cherie, mon amour, I have to drag myself away from your caresses. Ah ma Carla, if only I could lie around here with you all day but I have a war to run,” said Nicolas Sarkozy reluctantly sliding his hand from Carla’s thigh.

“You know, Monsieur Cameron, I underestimated you, mon ami. This could get us all of zee ‘ook and get all that egg off our visages. I am a bit tied up here at the moment but later I shall try smuggling myself into Tripoli with an offer le Colonel cannot refuse. Give my love to your ravishing wife Samantha.”
“I will. Sometimes, I don’t know what I would do without her. What was that?  I thought I heard something.”
“Oh nothing, Prime Minister,” Nicolas kisses Carla behind the ear.  “Just a little unfinished business here at the palace.”

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What is a no-fly zone? It would be nice if it were a way to keep flies off our picnic but I don’t think this is what our British prime minister, David Cameron means. having said that, does he really know what he means?

Let’s remember that in the early weeks of the Arab Spring he was off on a tactlessly-timed arms deal tour of the Middle East where he admits he forgot that he was in charge when the crisis in Libya started. Then it was all inactivity and bungle and now he is trying to make amends. The trouble is that his actions are just as inappropriate even after his change of direction.  Does he know what he is doing?

He wants us to begin this so-called No-Fly-Zone as if it really only means policing the skies over Libya in a pre-war bi-plane. In reality what do these planes do if the Libyan government sends a plane in the direction of Benghazi? We all know the answer, well I thought we did. We would have another war on our hands and, yet again, the West would be seen interfering in Middle Eastern affairs.

David Cameron has been talking to the French President Nicolas Sarkozy who is all gung ho to go in there sabres rattling. Mr Cameron, with so many things falling apart in his hands at home, has been impressed by the idea of “doing something.”

Now he is showing his irritation with American President Obama who is being accused of that most non-Cameron response – thoughtful consideration. If there is to be a happy outcome to the Arab Spring it will not be achieved by Western interference. We have to stand back if we want to prevent the usual East-West divide in international affairs and make the sacrifices of many idealistic and brave Arabs just another excuse for Western dominance.

We should let Mr Cameron know that the last military alliance between an American President and a British prime minister is too recent a memory for us to be relaxed about this latest ill-considered policy.

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I have never been any good at money. I am not proud of this but at least I am being honest here. I find numbers difficult as I have written here before and often even my telephone number evaporates from my mind just when I need to recall it. So that wonderful country, Ireland, has all my sympathy as it struggles with its nightmare economic problems.

It is amazing stuff even for my numerically challenged brain. Put simply, and that is all I can muster at the best of times, Ireland is 75 billion Euros (£63.5 billion)  in debt which amounts to 94% of its national output. It is over-borrowing on your pocket money gone ballistic. I can remember those horrible cold sweats when I realized that I had bought something that I couldn’t afford and that terrible bank statement spelt out just how bad I had been just when I was hoping that no one would find out.

No wonder then that Brian “Biffy” Cowen looks so sick these days. He is the Irish Taoiseach (Prime Minister) and he must be having one of my cold sweat attacks because he, just like me at my worst, has been a very naughty boy and broken all the rules set by grim financial misery-guts. The European Union, which had always been such good news for small countries like Ireland, Portugal and Greece, has turned strict and nasty all of a sudden.

Well, rules are rules, I suppose. no country is allowed to have a deficit of more than 3% of its Gross Domestic Product (GDP)  – which means the money it makes – but Ireland has built up a deficit of 32%. Oh Brian, you will get smacked legs at the very least. Unlike some of my problems though he is being offered  money to make his worries go away. Lots of European money has gone to help Ireland over the years and it has been the making of a country which appears to have gone spend spend spend mad. The trouble is, like any pact with the devil, the European Union is demanding a price but suddenly, Mr Cowen is trying to avoid the inevitable. He is saying he doesn’t want a big dollop of European dosh to bail Ireland out of its debts. Why the Hell not Brian? It is free money isn’t it? The trouble is that there is no such thing as a free lunch. He thinks, but can’t say it, that getting his debts paid off might just make him look a bit of a pillock and not only has he got some elections coming up but he thinks that Angela Merkel of Germany and Nicolas Sarkozy of France,  the big bad guys of Europe, would use the money offer as a way of forcing him to do terrible things like raising taxes or to generally whatever they tell him to do…they know that they have a firm grip on his bollocks and they like the feeling.

Across Europe, politicians and bankers want Ireland to take the money but Brian Cowen is saying he doesn’t need it and that everything is under control. Trust me, he says, I am a politician. I wonder who will be the next Irish Taoiseach.

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