I like Radoslaw Sikorski, the Polish Foreign Minister. I like his style too – he says it as he says it. He was right too. British Prime Minister, David Cameron has “fucked up” over Europe.

I’ve been away for two weeks and in that time I’ve seen my profound reservations about two of our Prime Ministers justified. Now both David Cameron and Tony Blair are both exposed in their incompetence.

Forgetting Cameron’s blundering appointment, defence and now apology for his ill-considered recruitment of the disgraced phone-tapping ex-editor of the News Of The World, let’s look at his repeated mismanagement of Britain’s role in Europe now that he is almost certainly going to be defeated over his opposition to the appointment, expected today, of  Jean-Claude Juncker as the new EU president.

It could have been so different if, here in Britain, our party leaders had spent more time working on improving the EU than hiding from their own Euro-sceptic backbenchers. Politicians have an obligation to explain as well as to represent. Now, Britain’s only main pro-European party, the Liberal-Democrats, is being slaughtered at the polls.

The Polish Foreign Minister Mr Sikorski summed it up the Jean-Claude Juncker affair in that leaked recording: ‘It’s either a very badly thought through move, or, not for the first time a kind of incompetence in European affairs. Remember? He fucked up the fiscal pact. He fucked it up. Simple as that.

‘He is not interested, he does not get it, he believes in the stupid propaganda, he stupidly tries to play the system… his whole strategy of feeding [his Eurosceptic fellow Conservatives] scraps in order to satisfy them is just as I predicted, turning against him.

‘He should have said, fuck off, tried to convince people and isolate [those sceptics]. But he ceded the field to those that are now embarrassing him.’

And what about the other British Prime Minister who let down his country. I was horrified to return from holiday and read about the worsening situation in Iraq. My sympathies, yet again, have to be extended to the Iraqi people for this the latest round of horror.  So, Mr Blair, not only were there no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq but there has been no peaceful post-Saddam settlement either. You lied to us then and you won’t admit your errors now. As you said once, let history be the judge. I think I know what it will say.

Wayne Rooney

I had a lovely time in Italy but coming home to England, it looks like everything is beginning to unravel. I think we deserve better. We can’t even rely on Wayne Rooney.

——————————————————————————————————–

STEPHEN DEARSLEY’S SUMMER OF LOVE BY COLIN BELL

My novel, Stephen Dearsley’s Summer Of Love, was published  on 31 October 2013. It is the story of a young fogey living in Brighton in 1967 who has a lot to learn when the flowering hippie counter culture changes him and the world around him.

It is now available as a paperback or on Kindle (go to your region’s Amazon site for Kindle orders)

You can order the book from the publishers, Ward Wood Publishing:

http://wardwoodpublishing.co.uk/titles-fiction-colin-bell-stephen-dearsleys-summer-of-love.htm 

…or from Book Depository:

http://www.bookdepository.co.uk/Stephen-Dearsleys-Summer-Love-Colin-Bell/9781908742070

…or from Amazon:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=Stephen%20Dearsley’s%20Summer%20Of%20love

feature=mhee

COLIN BELL’S PUBLICATIONS:

Stephen Dearsley’s Summer Of Love
Ward Wood Publishing
October 30, 2013

http://www.wardwoodpublishing.co.uk/titles-fiction-colin-bell-stephen-dearsleys-summer-of-love.htm

Genius Floored: Uncurtained Window
Soaring Penguin Press
June 15, 2013
Poetry anthology


http://www.soaringpenguinpress.com/publications/poetry/genius-floored-whispers-in-smoke/

Genius Floored: Whispers in Smoke
Soaring Penguin Press
June 6, 2014
Poetry anthology

http://www.soaringpenguinpress.com/publications/poetry/genius-floored-whispers-in-smoke/

Reaching Out
Cinnamon Press
December 2012
Poetry and short story anthology

http://www.cinnamonpress.com/product-item/reaching-out/

Tic Toc
A Kind Of A Hurricane Press
June 2014
Poetry anthology

http://www.kindofahurricanepress.com/2014/06/tic-toc-is-now-available.html

The Blotter
The Blotter Magazine Inc.
November 2009
Three pages of poetry in the American South’s unique, free, international literature and arts magazine.

http://www.blotterrag.com/back-issues/2009-11.pdf

The Fib Review
Musepie Press
My Fibonacci poetry has appeared in this journal from 2009 until the present

http://www.musepiepress.com/fibreview/writers.html

Shot Glass Journal
Muse Pie Press
My poetry has appeared in various issues of this short form poetry journal

http://www.musepiepress.com/shotglass/writers.html

Every Day Poets Magazine
Every Day Poets
I have various poems of the day published in this 365 days a year poetry magazine.

http://www.everydaypoets.com/?s=Colin+Bell

In The Night Count The Stars
Bittersweet Editions
March 1, 2014
An “uncommon anthology” of images, fragments, stories and poetry.

http://www.bittersweeteditions.com/in-the-night-count-the-stars.html#%2EU8ZFXY1dXoo

The post David Cameron has f***ed up over Europe – I hope our politicians won’t f**** us up too. appeared first on Wolfie Wolfgang.

I was proud to have been one of over one million people who demonstrated in London against the British government’s plan to attack Iraq. Was I right? History will judge.

Tony Blair: ‘I took this country to war because it was the right thing to do. It was the right thing for Britain and one day history will judge me.’

The post Iraq Ten Years On. Has history judged yet? appeared first on Wolfie Wolfgang.

If the wild-eyed leaders of Hamas and Israel honestly believe that this bloodshed will lead to peace then it is time for some wiser council from two World leaders who just might make a difference.

It is already too late for some – let’s not allow this to get any worse. Presidents Obama and Morsi need to take the lead here or nothing will change. Sympathy is appropriate due to his recent bereavement but let’s not put our hope in the discredited part-time Middle East Envoy, blood-stained Tony Blair of Iraq notoriety.

The post Time to stoop the blood-letting in Gaza and Israel. appeared first on Wolfie Wolfgang.

We love our knights here in Britain. There is something special about being defended from evil by these men in shining armour and long pointy swords. That’s why they are all going to the wedding of Prince William Windsor and the young damsel Kate Middleton, soon to be a bit of a Lady Guinevere herself.

Hang on a moment, I may have got this wrong.

I am told that the knights going to the wedding are not heroic fighting figures at all, nope they are mostly old geezers in funny hats with a few younger royals thrown in to flesh out the numbers.

How disappointing that there won’t be a few daring blades there like that heroic knight in the Monty Python film about the Holy Grail who carried on fighting even after his arms and legs had been chopped off.

Well, I suppose, one of those knights of the funny hats who manages to survive as many attempts at chopping him down is the Queen’s favourite son, Prince Andrew, Duke of York, rejected husband of the lovely Lady Fergie, and Imperial Envoy and Ambassador to dodgy businessmen around the World. He will be at the wedding.

Young William is also a knight of the funny hats as is his Dad, Prince Charles, a near-sighted Don Quixote who tilts at windmills such as modern life and who looks strangely normal in this outfit. The royal princes, also William’s other uncle, Edward (who has now given up working because his failures got too expensive) are just some of the honorary members of this noble order of knights known as the Knights of the Garter and they are obviously going to be at the wedding. They are not real heroes though, they are known as supernumerary knights as they are only included because they are royal princes – supernumerary indeed.

No, the real knights are people like this man:

Sir John Major, Lancelot to some but failed Conservative Prime Minister to many others. He is going to the wedding.

Another knight is invited who was never frightened of wielding a sword or a handbag:

The iron lady herself, former Conservative Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher.

The Order Of The Knights Of The Garter goes back to the olde worlde dayes of medieval England when knights were knights and peasants knew their place. The boss knight who gives out these knighthoods is the reigning monarch who, in the case of Queen Elizabeth is no stranger to silly hats.

It is odd how she looks perfectly normal in this gear whilst the others all look like prats. Anyway, in this week of so-called royal wedding fever, the Knights of the Garter business has caused a scandal. Why is it, even stout royalists, ask, why is it that the order of the funny hats get in to that wedding but the last two British Prime Ministers do not? If even the Syrian ambassador gets an invite whilst his government is killing Syrian citizens, how could the last two Labour Prime Ministers be left off the list?

Well, even though as former Prime Ministers, they will get those feathery hats one day, they haven’t got them yet and so, sorry loves, you can’t come in.  I suspect they are not bothered but it says two things about the British establishment. One is that it has become, once again, an aristocratic elite and the other thing is that it has shown its increasingly fumbling grasp on reality.

I bet William and Kate wish that they could have had that small Norfolk wedding after-all.

The post The Knights, without their shining armour, on the Royal Wedding List. appeared first on Wolfie Wolfgang.

As I have said before in these blogs, I am sure that David Cameron is a very nice chap who would like to do his best. Yesterday, yet again, he was telling us that he is feeling “incredibly optimistic” which was quite sweet but also quite scary as he embarks on the government’s hastily cobbled together plans for reorganizing the National Health Service. This is the Coalition Government’s style: rush in and get things done.

We didn’t, of course, know what we were getting at the last general election. Would it be Labour or would it be the Conservatives? No one really expected this Coalition between the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats, not even them themselves. So manifestos had to be largely thrown away and the new government began a process of inventing policies as they went along like this new NHS plan. All we could see is that they wanted to do things quickly, change things, make an impact.

One thing they did promise before the election, well the Conservatives that is, was that they would move quickly on making major cuts in the economy even if they didn’t know exactly how they would do it. David Cameron is incredibly optimistic about this too and so our economy is being overhauled with a whistle and a prayer.

Behind all this is the ghost of Tony Blair who, in 1997,  arrived in office as a bright young thing full of great plans for the future and ready for change.

The trouble with Blair, well there were a lot of things wrong with him but that is another point, the trouble with Blair’s first administration was that it was frightened of doing things too quickly, frightened of scaring the City and frightened of scaring the middle Classes so it lost its great chance to change things whilst it was still popular.

David Cameron admired Tony Blair and would love to have his now derided “common touch” – none of the rest of us want another Tony but David is an old-fashioned guy. The one thing he is determined to avoid though is Tony’s big mistake.

So there will be no time for reflection, no time for details, no time for plans B – the Coalition is going to act quickly even if that means ignoring the experts and ruining whole swathes of the country’s infrastructure in the process.

Let’s hope that they get at least some of it right.

Margaret Thatcher, rather surprizingly, was an admirer of the Labour Prime Minister, Clement Attlee who was responsible for introducing the National Health Service after the Second World War even though he knew that there really wasn’t enough money in the till to pay for it. He is reported to have said afterwards that he knew that if he didn’t introduce a welfare state that looked after its citizens “from the cradle to the grave”, no one ever would.  I would love to think that Mr Cameron had similarly great ideas but, as Margaret Thatcher said of the quietly businesslike Attlee, he was “all substance and no show.” not something we could say about Tony Blair or David Cameron.

David Cameron, as well as being “incredibly optimistic” is also, I feel sure, full of good intentions as were most British prime ministers when they were new to office.

‘Where there is discord, may we bring harmony. Where there is error, may we bring truth. Where there is doubt, may we bring faith. And where there is despair, may we bring hope.’

Well, even her strongest supporters would say that she didn’t do any of that.

New prime ministers deserve a touch of optimism but they also need to get real. Government is hard, change in a modern democracy is complex and frustrating. If you are a bright new broom, like Thatcher, Blair and Cameron it is relatively easy to make big brash speeches of incredible optimism. If you have to try to pick up the pieces after them though, it is another story. Look at post-Thatcher PM, John Major and post-Blair PM, Gordon Brown.

The post We should be scared of David Cameron’s incredible optimism….. appeared first on Wolfie Wolfgang.

Some of us were thrilled the other day to hear the multi-talented and mega-cool Russian prime minister, Vladimir Putin, tickling the ivories at a charity event in St Petersburg. The land that produced some of the greatest of all pianists, Richter, Horovitz, Kissin, has coughed up another blistering talent. Well, Putin certainly has a talent for something – self-publicity. Let’s not knock his musical ambitions though – music is politics these days.

Remember British prime minister David Cameron, just before, er, winning the last general election? One of the many eye-catching ideas he was offering then, in April 2010,  was the Conservative Party’s school music competition, Star Schools,  where the top prize is to make a record with Gary Barlow of Take That fame. the second prize is to make two records with Gary Barlow and so on until they reach the booby prize which will is being locked in a recording studio with Gary Barlow for life. David Cameron, not a great musician himself, thinks music is “incredibly important” giving people “a feeling of self belief whilst doing something fun.”

Music has done wonders for various other politicians at times when their self belief needed a bit of a boost. President obama is no hot air-guitarist…..

President George W. Bush knows at least one chord…….

and President Clinton knows the pleasure of a good blow……

Tony Blair, the former British prime minister, gave up a promising career as a rock musician, to save the nation and lead it into war……

..and Pope Benedict actually has musical talent.

Who would have guessed that the German Chancellor, Frau Angela Merkel was a frustrated rock star after hearing her destroy a Eurotrash song with rock sensation Heidi Fudlegraf, who?, Heidi Fudlegraf, the lead singer of German mega-band, The Firecats.

There is no surprize though to learn that Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi can charm the birds out of the trees with his own special brand of romantic crooning.

No, the World is in safe hands for as long as our polticians are sensitive musical types and don’t the know it. If they have no particular skills, like French President Nicolas Sarkozy, then at least he had the sense to marry the gifted, er, musician and singer, the leggy and not too proud to show it, Carla Bruni.

“Yes” David Cameron might say, “Music is incredibly important – especially all that depressing Eighties stuff. It’s incredibly important to show people that you like music so I keep saying that I think bands like The Smiths, Radiohead and Blur are, well, incredible. Gary Barlow is incredible too of course. Pity I know nothing about it.”

The post Piano Putin and other great political musicians – they’re all so cool – they wish. appeared first on Wolfie Wolfgang.

I Did It My Way lyrics © Emi April Music Inc.; Carter Boys Publishing

The post Read all about how I saved the world. appeared first on Wolfie Wolfgang.

Peter Mandelson, in case you have never heard of him, was a key figure in the Labour Party over the last couple of decades. He was, in fact one of only three significant figures in the Labour movement in that time and the only one of the three who didn’t become Prime Minister – well not yet anyway.

He is the great survivor so it is an unwise commentator who ever writes Peter Mandelson off even now that the Labour Party has been chucked out of office and its former leaders have all disappeared into the undergrowth for the time being.

Peter Mandelson worked as Tony Blair’s right-hand man, brain and confidant in the creation, with their friend Gordon Brown, of the political phenomenon that was New Labour.

He served in the Blair cabinet, left twice under the cloud of scandal and emerged for a third time when his former friend, Gordon Brown, now Prime Minister, was in desperate need of someone with an instinct for public relations. He was Gordon’s “eminence grise” or, maybe more suitably, his “eminence turquoise” – Gordon had enough grey already and Peter certainly injected a touch of colour into the Brown administration.

So these memoirs have been much anticipated but I am not sure that many people expected them to get out into print with quite such indecorous haste. Peter has not been wasting much time in the two months since the General Election that gave birth to the Cameron/Clegg coalition but then he is a doer, as they say, and, as his brush with financial scandal attests, he is not shy of making a quick bob. The book is bound to make up for the loss of his ministerial salary and the trappings of government that he wore so elegantly.

He must have thought that no matter how much money the book makes, he can never catch up with Tony Blair’s outrageously mercenary post-Prime-Ministerial personal fund raising schemes. We are told also that Gordon Brown is hidden away up in his Scottish home, heads down writing his probably multi-volume history of how he saved the World.

At least Peter has got in first and, more importantly, written an entertaining piece of tittle tattle.

Peter Mandelson is a funny man, good company, I would imagine, but also a very intelligent and effective politician with ample helpings of gigantic ego and ruthlessness that is a requirement for anyone who wants to succeed in politics. So the book ought to have been a significant piece of contemporary history….

…but, entertaining though the book is, it has surprized me that it has reduced the political history of the last thirteen years into the bubbliest and frothiest of kiss-and-tell confessions. The revelations are all in quotation marks…..we already know that the politics of this period was about the clash of two big personalities but Peter fills in the quotes. It is, and there is nothing wrong with this, like a gossipy chat down the pub. I will stick with it to the end.

For all his posturing about writing a serious book, Peter Mandelson’s memoir is packed with Tony said this and Gordon said that whilst I, Peter, mostly got it right. I suspect though, reading between the lines, that Tony and Gordon would have been lost without Peter but then, in the end, they both lost with Peter too. Love him or hate him, the man is a winner so let’s forgive him his vanity.

He makes me laugh, he is never boring and he is, as my grandmother used to say, as sharp as mustard, so I for one will be sad if we don’t hear from Peter Mandelson again.

The post Peter Mandelson spills the beans appeared first on Wolfie Wolfgang.