Liberal Burblings has moved to www.liberalburblings.co.uk - you will be redirected shortly

....And I promise this is the final move. It's been a bit like Mao Tse-Tung's Long March; going from a naff blogspot address to a nice .com address but then realising I couldn't shift to WordPress on it, so then buying another domain through GoDaddy and then realising that WordPress.com is relatively pants, so then starting a test domain with a hosted WordPress.org package and then realising it would be easier to redirect to that test domain rather than trying to shift it.

Bottom line: I am now on http://www.liberalburblings.co.uk/ and using a wonderful shiny new Wordpress template from Artisteer and some lovely plug-ins. Oh, and my daughter has provided some invaluable graphic design advice to give me a spanking new header!

Thanks for your patience.

Time for a planned withdrawal from Afghanistan

The murder of five soldiers from inside a Afghan police station has made me change my mind on the Afghanistan situation. I'm happy to join Lembit Opik and the Daily Sport in calling for a planned withdrawal of British service personnel from Afghanistan. Frankly, if the Afghans, as represented by that member of their police force who shot the five soldiers, don't want us there, then: sod them.

But that doesn't mean we should just precipitously withdraw leaving a vacuum. We need to have a re-directed strategy to neuter Al-Quaeda and other terrorist cells. That's why we went to Afghanistan in the first place; not to conquer the country and add it to our "Empire" or to beat the Taleban. Unfortunately defeat of the Taleban has become too conflated with our original aims. Aims have been confused.

Bear in mind: Al-Quaeda is mainly in Pakistan, not Afghanistan. So we need a campaign specifically targetted at them and other potential terrorist cells who will attack this country. In the meantime, we need to set a plan to withdraw our boys and girls from full-scale combat missions in Afghanistan. We're doing it wrongly. If the Afghan police force won't accept us, then it's time to bring our boys and girls home. End of. They're too precious to waste on this charade.

VIDEO: Russian warehouse Armageddon

This really is worth watching, if only as a lesson in health and safety at work. It looks like a normal, peaceful working day in a warehouse. And then utter mayhem breaks loose. Unbelievable.

Some points:

• The two warehouse guys under those boxes (which are full of cognac and whisky) seemed to have been inside their strengthened forklift cockpits when all collapsed, so one suspects they were relatively unscathed (though no notes on the clip state what happened to the poor fellows).
• The forklifts are petrol or diesel-fuelled which probably adds to the power with which one of them hits the racking structure. Battery powered forklifts probably wouldn't do as much damage.
• The racking structure does not appear to be fixed to the ground or attached to the roof, which may account for the "easy" way the whole thing collapses like a house of cards.

Democrats triumph in New York as Republicans fight like rats in a sack

Last night's US election results were billed as a verdict on one year of Obama. And the verdict was? Um.....er.....a mixed bag. The Republicans picked up the Virginia governorship, which was predictable. But a more knife-edge race in New Jersey, which the Democrats should have won, also swung to the Republicans.

However, any celebrations for the Republicans were somewhat dampened by the result in the 23rd New York congressional district, which was a truly stupendous result for the Democrats. It's the first time the Democrats have won that seat since the Civil War. And the reason they did it is a damning verdict on the current state of the Republican party. There were three main candidates in the race until last weekend; the unusual third contender being a candidate, Doug Hoffman, from the Conservative party. Yes, you read right, the American Conservative party. Their slogan is "Fighting the two party system, one county at a time". In an extraordinary display of indiscipline, and firm evidence, for me, that she cannot be considered a serious Presidential candidate for 2012, Sarah Palin supported Hoffman. Then last weekend the Republican candidate withdrew. The result of all this chaos in the Republican ranks was to let the Democrats in.

That in many ways is totemic of the state of the Republican party across the USA. They are fighting amongst themselves as to whether they should go for a right-ward lurch or occupy the centre ground. And they ain't done fightin' yet.

Take into account Bloomberg's narrow scrape at the hands of the Democrat candidate in New York, and recent polling (see below) and this isn't a bad set of results for Obama:

A year after he won the presidential election, 54% of Americans approve of the job President Obama is doing, according to a new CNN/Opinion Research survey.Said pollster Keating Holland: "Obama's approval rating of 54 percent is nearly identical to the 53 percent of the vote he won a year ago. And in nearly every demographic category, the percent that approve of Obama today is within two to three points of the percent who voted for him in 2008."

A Tory government would do the same; but with a posh accent

That appears to be the "choice" Torylab present us with, in respect of the Nutt affair.

As I astonished myself with my own readiness to listen to Smooth radio with Mark Goodier yesterday, I heard our Pontificater-in-waiting, D. Cameron, on Nutt. It was clear he would have done exactly the same as the current government concering this.

Oh, but wait: he loudly decried the "unseemly spat" over the affair. He criticised Alan Johnson for "shouting" at Nutt over the airwaves. So, obviously, the"shouting" with a Tory government would be done behind closed doors.Grayling, presuming someone has had time to brief him, will give advisers one of those 'dressings down' he's talked about. It would all be done behind closed doors, presumably, but with a reassuringly expensive accent.

And this approach would benefit the public - how? At least with Labour to get to hear these slanging matches.

Is it OK to keep on gloating over Nick Griffin on Question Time?

Yes.

It was amusing to hear Darrell O'Brien going on about this on Wossie. He said that basically Griffin is "no good on telly". And he also said that the best bit was Griffin, afterwards, saying "Boo hoo - they ganged up on me".

Good point. The BNP, as led by Griffin, seem to have an infinite ability to twist any argument around to extract, what they think is, maximum advantage. This oftens leads them into the most perverse positions. And the "they ganged up on me" position is perhaps one of the most perverse and self-defeating of the lot.

Think about it. Nick Griffin is meant to be this fantastically strong and clever leader. He said going on Question Time was a breathrough for his party and there was countless pre-publicity including a "countdown clock" on the BNP web site.

Then, when he got there, he was shredded into small pieces, mainly by the audience.

So he complains, particularly about the audience, saying that the show shouldn't have been held in London because it is "not a British city any more".

Well, think about that one also. The BNP are often implying, and I've had comments from their supporters saying this, that some races are not as clever as others.

So we had their strong and clever leader confronted by people from supposedly "not as clever" heritages who managed to "bully" him.

It doesn't stack up. Either he is very clever and strong or he is a pathetic wimp who lacks basic televisual skills. They can't have it both ways.

The lobby of the new Newbury Cinema - custom built for exhibitionists

A couple of photos from walking around Newbury this weekend.



It's very good to see the new cinema ready for the off. Something tells me that the wide glass front to the lobby, which looks out onto the busy Market Street/Cheap Street junction, is likely to attract....well let's just say "exhibitionists". I'll leave it at that.









It's great to see that the Monument pub has spruced itself up. Some years ago, the "Monument" title was drowned out by its owner's brand name. Now they seem rightly proud of this historic name, with its connections to the Great Fire of London.

"Beach ball referee" strikes again

My adviser on football tells me that the referee who allowed the infamous "beach ball goal" against Liverpool has been disciplined: (this report is dated October 19th)

Mike Jones, the referee who incorrectly awarded Darren Bent's goal for Sunderland against Liverpool on Saturday, will not officiate in the Premier League this weekend.
Bent's shot struck a beach ball thrown from the visiting section at the Stadium of Light and deflected past the Liverpool goalkeeper Pepe Reina.
Fifa's laws of the game state "the referee should stop, suspend or abandon the match because of outside interference of any kind", meaning the goal should have been ruled out and the match restarted with a drop ball.
Jones will take charge of the Championship game between Peterborough and Scunthorpe at London Road.

A little bit of justice, but Liverpool could lose out on Champions League involvement and, therefore, millions of pounds of revenue, because the referee and three other officials didn't seem to be aware of a basic rule of the game, known even to referees of Sunday park games.

And now look at this. The same referee presided over Hull v Burnley yesterday and is again in the firing line for his decisions:

Phil Brown (Hull's manager) was left fuming at Turf Moor after match official Mike Jones cost his side a vital three points this afternoon.The City manager, who was under increased scrutiny with many believing he has only two games with which to save his City career, was not helped by the inept officiating of Jones, with Brown citing four costly incorrect decisions.

Banking: Mr Mainwaring set for comeback

Look at the wonderful nostalgia pervading the government's expected announcement of the break-up of the government controlled banks. You can smell it.

We'll see the return of the dear old Trustees Savings Bank! How wonderful and quaint! I remember we had a little branch in Bude in Landsdown Road back in the sixties. Marvellous.

And even more wonderful and obscure - we'll see the return of the Williams & Glyn's bank! Am I dreaming this?

It's all redolant of those old leather bound blotters, pens on chains, polished wood and managers in three piece suits who wrote you stern letters when you were £1 overdrawn.

Strangely enough, I think this may be a step in the right direction. But how long it will be before this small banks are again gobbled up by big ones; is anyone's guess. Five minutes perhaps?

Another advisory professor disagreed with Professor Nutt

There was an interesting call to Any Answers? yesterday from a former Chief Investigations Officer with the customs service, who was in that career for 40 years and has followed and attended the deliberations of the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs. He said that it should be borne in mind that, apart from Professor Nutt, another Professor on the Council was and is advising in the opposite direction - i.e its reclassification to its present Class B status. That was Professor Lewis Appleby, the government's Director Mental Health.

So, the situation does not seem as clear-cut as has been made out. This fellow on Any Answers? also said that he thought Professor Nutt had not been sacked (from what is an unpaid role, by the way) for expressing opinions, but for not accepting the situation whereby politicians decide and the Advisory Council advises.

I merely pass this on.