I find Putin's propaganda department disappointing

Had this happened under Stalin we would by now have had a definite story of what actually was wrong with Vladimir Kara-Murza, a well known Russian oppositionist who is in hospital, having been taken ill suddenly a few days ago, almost immediately after showing a film about the rule of Putin's buddy Ramzan Kadyrov in Chechnya. Mr Kara-Murza is, apparently, still unconscious and on a life support machine with many different tubes attached to him. Here is a fairly good summary of events and comments.

Given the number of President Putin's opponents who have died either violently or mysteriously and given the sequence of events that immediately preceded Mr Kara-Murza's sudden violent illness, inevitably certain conclusions were drawn by all those who follow these events in Russia and outside it.

What astonished me is that there was no counter-story prepared. We have been given no official version of what is wrong with Mr Kara-Murza beyond the odd bleating about the possibility of out of date yoghurt or a bad banana. Oh really? Total kidney failure and coma because of out of date yoghurt? Who is going to believe that?

Well, I'll tell you who: NYU professor and Russian security expert Mark Galeotti who told RuNet Echo:

Let's wait for proper medical assessments before constructing fantasy scenarios that say more about our own assumptions than anything else. Kadyrov certainly is all too willing to resort to murder, but his is the way of the gun and the bomb, not the subtleties of poison.

Kadyrov? Really? No other person and organization might have been involved? Hmmm. I appreciate the need to be cautious (as I more than appreciate Mr Kara-Murza senior's ultra cautious comments) but this is going beyond anything sensible. Which brings me to my original point: where are those "proper" medical assessments? Really what on earth did Lieutenant-Colonel Putin learn in the KGB?

Tax Freedom Day was yesterday

So, yesterday was the day on which we stopped working for the government. Put another way, as the Adam Smith Institute does:

Brits work 150 days of the year solely to pay taxes; every day from 1st January to 30th May.

That is, in fact, a day longer than we worked in 2014 and a month longer than they do on the other side of the Pond, where Tax Freedom Day was on April 24.

There is a little bit of good news:

Cost of Government Day, which represents Total Managed Expenditure as a day of the year, falls on 29th June, three days earlier than it fell in 2014. While this suggests a slight improvement over last year, the money borrowed to cover the month-long gap between Tax Freedom Day must eventually be paid off with future taxes.

Those tax cuts are badly needed for the economy and before anyone tells me that tax cuts will mean the government will not be able to afford the great many things it tries (very badly) to run, I may say that it is high time we re-thought what ought to be the state's competence.

Lord Pearson's first written question

Parliament is back to work or whatever it might be called in some cases and Lord Pearson of Rannoch has put down a Written Question that might be considered to be of some topical interest:

To ask Her Majesty’s Government whether they plan to support a contest in the United Kingdom between artists depicting the prophet Mohammed, and if so, whether they will provide security protection for such an event.

It will be interesting to see whether HMG in its reply will use the fact that they have no plans to support any contests of that kind to avoid the more important issue of security protection. It is not, after all the duty of a government to support or oppose drawing contests but it is its duty to provide security for freedom of expression.

City AM has picked up the story, illustrating it for reasons best known to itself with a slightly ridiculous picture from 2010 that includes Nigel Farage, but reminding everyone that:

The question comes just weeks after two armed men were shot dead after attacking an arts show displaying pictures of the Prophet Mohammed in Texas.

In January, 12 people were killed in an attack on the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo, with one Shariah cleric saying it was “revenge for the honour” of Mohammed after the magazine's satirical depictions of the Prophet

In other words, no matter what the Muslim Council of Britain, apparently still perceived by the media as the organization that purports to speak for Muslims in the UK, may say, the question of free expression and security are of grave importance in the West.

A spokesman for the Muslim Council of Britain dismissed the question, and said: "Baron Pearson of Rannoch often makes silly propositions, and this is one of them."

Which part of the question do they consider silly?

However, if you want to read silly, have a look at this Twitter conversation between people, most of whom have no idea what the question is about and one of whom is actually saying that he WILL wring Lord Pearson's neck if the latter comes across him, the tweeter. Now, that's silly. In fact, stupid beyond belief.

A rant about eurosceptics

Don't think I've had one of these for a long time but it is time I did. This is not about euroscepticism in general but about eurosceptic organizations. As it happens, another one of them had a conference this morning about Brexit. It was under Chatham House rule (why?) so I could not tweet about it. The rule says that I can use the material but no reference to the details of the event or the speakers. Well, I shall not refer to the details or the speakers and using the material will not be of much use since everything that was spoken has been spoken many times, mostly in the same words and often by the same people in the years I have been attending such meetings and conferences. (For understandable reasons I do not do as much of it as I used to. There is only so often one can listen to the same words, knowing that they lead to precious little.)

Suffice it to say that as seems to have become the norm for these meetings, discussions and conferences, the panel was entirely male though there were six (out of about thirty) women in the audience. Since one member of the panel had rather pompously and condescendingly informed us that we needed to win the women's vote, which was not going to be easy as women preferred the status quo (though how he knew was a mystery) someone did ask how they intended to do this without, apparently, bothering to have any women speakers.

The chairman, no names no pack drill, said even more condescendingly that the questioner, as a woman, should be able to answer that question better. Upon which I suggested that perhaps we can make tea and stuff envelopes. I am not convinced the audience quite grasped the sarcasm behind the comment but I did insist on discussing the problem for at least a couple more minutes. Precisely, why are there no women speakers? Are there no women who understand the issues of Brexit and have something to say on the subject? What, none at all? Answer came there none.

Quite separately, I have been working on an article about a leading Conservative suffragist, Primrose Dame and political activist, Lady Knightley (1842 - 1913) and, therefore, reading about women, mostly on the conservative but some on the liberal side, fighting for various political and other rights. It is not exactly surprising that I should find it depressing that similar fights have to go on more than a hundred years later. Nor am I too impressed when told that there are no women speakers because these are chosen on merit and not as a result of positive discrimination. No women of merit at all? Might there be something wrong in the eurosceptic movement.

As it happens I do not think that putting a token female at the head of the whatever NO campaign we might cobble together will do. But then, I do not suppose anyone will listen to a female voice, anyway.

Incidentally, there was also an issue about eurosceptics sniping at each other and what a bad idea that was. The recent media coverage of UKIP was, according to one speaker, very unfortunate. Well, of course, what was really unfortunate was UKIP's idiotic behaviour but, it seems, that not sniping is being interpreted as never disagreeing or criticizing because up with this we must not put. It is good to know that Soviet rules of political behaviour are being imposed on us all even before we have started.

Rant over, you will be glad to know. Normal service will resume tomorrow.

First Reading of the Bill

Well, HM was not kidding when she made it clear that "early legislation will be introduced to provide for an in-out referendum on membership of the European Union before the end of 2017". The Bill had its First Reading in the Commons today and will have its Second Reading on June 9.

The text of it is available on line and will be available together with whatever notes HMG thinks desirable in print tomorrow.

The Referendum will be called some time before December 31, 2017 (but we knew that). As far as I can see, the later it is, the better for us as the chances of us winning are slender in any case and are next to zero in the next year or so.

The question on the ballot paper will be: “Should the United Kingdom remain a member of the European Union?” and I understand the UKIP Leader-for-Life-and-in-Perpetuity has already been making negative noises about that.

Farage, who is likely to play a leading role in the 'out' campaign, said the wording showed a pro-EU bias. "It is a simple straightforward, unambiguous question. That much is clear. However that Cameron is opting to give the pro-EU side the positive 'Yes' suggests strongly that his negotiations are so much fudge. He has already decided which way he wants the answer to be given, without a single power repatriated," he said.

Many of us sincerely hope that Mr Farage will not be playing a particularly leading role in the campaign and might even consider taking a back seat together with a few other politicians. On the whole, Mr Farage's credibility outside his cult is not particularly high and that is bound to reflect on the campaign.

As to the wording of the question, has Mr Farage forgotten the Scottish referendum, in which the NO side won decisively? However you phrase the question the pro-EU side will be defending the status quo and that is always a better position to have.

The other person who has been making stupid statements is the incoming First Minister of Scotland, one Nicola Sturgeon.

Describing the prospect of being taken out of the European Union against Scotland’s will as “democratically indefensible”, Sturgeon, who will succeed Alex Salmond as leader of the SNP next month, says that her party will table an amendment to any bill on an in/out referendum requiring that all four nations of the UK have to agree to withdrawal.

There has to be a limit to the SNP's refusal to acknowledge basic facts. The people of Scotland voted in a referendum to stay in the United Kingdom and they did so in the full knowledge that a forthcoming IN/OUT referendum on the EU will be taken on a national British level. There is no point in pretending that it was otherwise unless Ms Sturgeon wants to argue that the people of Scotland are, as a nation, uniquely stupid, something history does not bear her out on.

What will she do if in the UK referendum Scotland as a whole votes to leave the EU?

Moving along to other important issues, this is the definition of who will be entitled to vote:

Those entitled to vote in the referendum are —

(a) the persons who, on the date of the referendum, would be entitled to vote as electors at a parliamentary election in any constituency,

(b) the persons who, on that date, are disqualified by reason of being peers from voting as electors at parliamentary elections but —

(i) would be entitled to vote as electors at a local government election in any electoral area in Great Britain,

(ii) would be entitled to vote as electors at a local election in any district electoral area in Northern Ireland, or

(iii) would be entitled to vote as electors at a European Parliamentary election in any electoral region by virtue of section 3 of the Representation of the People Act 1985 (peers resident outside the United Kingdom), and

(c) Commonwealth citizens who, on the date of the referendum, would be entitled to vote in Gibraltar as electors at a European Parliamentary election in the combined electoral region in which Gibraltar is comprised.

For the time being that should reassure those people who were desperately worried that EU citizens would be able to vote as they are entitled to vote in local elections, thanks to the Maastricht Treaty, though there is no particular evidence that many or even any of them do exercise that right.

The only people who will be allowed to vote in the referendum though they are disqualified from voting in the General Election are peers of the realm and, surely, nobody is against that. However, I have no doubt that there will be an attempt to bring in amendments to include other categories who are disqualified from voting in the GE but are allowed to vote in local and European elections.

There is a good deal of discussion about funding and expenses but, so far as I can see, no definite figures are mentioned, presumably because a sum designated now might not seem to be adequate in two years' time. There will, however, be some government money (well, all right, taxpayers' money) allocated to both sides of the campaign with the Electoral Commission deciding who is in the lead and who should be awarded that sum.

Other expenses will have to be raised and punctiliously accounted for. Well, fairly punctiliously. Past experience tells us that neither individuals nor organizations that are funded by the EU in some form or another, such as our many large NGOs, will see any need to inform the public of that fact or to add their expenses to that of the YES campaign. That will be our task and it will not be an easy one.

An election and a referendum

Events just keep happening. Poland went to the voting stations for the second round of the Presidential election and duly brought in the unexpected (at least before the first round) Andrzei Duda of the Law and Order Party. He got 53% of the vote to the outgoing President Komorowski's 47%. Official results will be announced tomorrow when we shall know the turn-out as well.

This is a remarkable and decisive victory for Mr Duda. It's remarkable because he is a relative unknown and Mr Komorowski has been a popular president. It suggests that many Poles have grown weary of President Komorowski's backers, the governing centre-right Civic Platform party.

In its eight years in office the party has maintained Poland's economic growth despite the financial crisis. But it has also reneged on some of its promises and increased the retirement age, an unpopular move.

Poland is gradually catching up to Western Europe's living standards but youth unemployment is high and Poles can still earn much more in the UK or Germany. Many Poles simply do not feel the benefit of 25 years of near uninterrupted growth and Mr Duda appeals to them.

He has promised to bring the retirement age back down, but he'd need his Law and Justice party to win this autumn's parliamentary elections to be able to do that. It's been 10 years since they won an election but many think that may now happen. If it does, judging by its last spell in office in 2005-2007, Poland will become more inward looking and much less at ease with its EU partners.

Why Poles, who just like all others in the developed world live longer and are healthier for longer should want to spend an ever larger proportion of their lives on the scrap heap, living on an inadequate pension is anybody's guess but one can understand why many of them are sceptical about the much-touted economic growth when they look at the huge exodus of the economically active population to the West.

Meanwhile, there was also a referendum in Ireland but this was about same-sex marriage, which was voted through, the first time such a measure has been passed via a plebiscite. What, one wonders, would those Irish writers who have made their names describing a gloomy priest-ridden Ireland have said or, indeed, will say, since many of them are still around.

The actual subject of the plebiscite is of no interest to this blog. But one thing struck me as worthy of comment and that is the huge campaign to bring people who had left to work in other countries (not unknown in Irish history) back to vote or as the hashtag had it: #Hometovote. Many, it seems, responded and took trains and planes and cars and, for all I know, bicycles to do just that, as this ex-pat relates.

It appears that 60.5% of the population, which must include the ex-pats, turned out and 62% of them voted yes to gay marriage. That is pretty decisive. And, undoubtedly, it is very touching that the Irish diaspora who have not the slightest intention of living in Ireland ever again, cared enough to come back to vote but it does raise some questions that we shall have to be dealing with when a very different referendum rolls around. At present anyone who has lived abroad more than a certain number of years has no right to vote here but that might change as the Conservatives have been hinting that they might look at the issue again. Nor is the ex-pat British vote, even at its largest, likely to be such a large percentage of the electorate as it is in the much smaller Ireland. All the same, what about that #Hometovote? How do we feel about it?

Should museums charge for entry?

For goodness' sake, I hear you cry, why is she bothering with that. Why is she not writing the promised second analysis of the election and its aftermath? Well, I am, dear readers but that is taking a somewhat longer time than I had hoped. I am also aware that this subject is not on the agenda at the moment. John Whittingdale, the new Culture Commissar Secretary having got the BBC in his sights is unlikely to take on another lot of big beasts for the time being. It will, however, come up again before this Parliament is out for the same reason that the BBC licensing needs to be looked at: the present situation is untenable and the museums and art galleries that really are part of this country's cultural fabric are suffering.

There are, of course, many issues to be raised, not least the question of tax reform that would make it easier for people to donate large sums to the various cultural institutions. They do a great deal of it already but why not make it easier to do so? The answer is that the Treasury would not like it but, maybe, we should stop listening to the Treasury.

In the end I do not think that the big institutions in London and other cities can survive without some money from the taxpayer; they do not anywhere else, not even in the US. The question is how that money is to be administered and what other funding can be raised.

This is the point at which the question of paying for entry is raised, only to be dismissed through various spurious reasons. We already pay through our taxes, I have heard from one person. Yes we do but we also pay for various theatres and opera houses and companies, yet there is no suggestion that seats at the National Theatre or Covent Garden be free. Furthermore, a good many visitors do not pay those taxes, being visitors in this country but the solution to that, seriously proposed by people who ought to know better, that there should be a system of some people paying but not others on the basis of whether they are contributing anything in direct taxation, would require the setting up of such a complicated bureaucracy as to make one's head spin.

If people are made to pay for entry to museums and art galleries they will stop going is the favourite refrain, which somehow manages to ignore the fact that almost every other country charges for entry and, apparently, people still go. In fact, in almost every other city in Western Europe and North America one will find more local people as a proportion of visitors than in London, where the large museums and art galleries are overwhelmingly filled with tourists. The only other place that might be comparable in that respect is Paris.

A couple of weeks ago I spent a few days in Budapest. While there I went to see a very fine exhibition of József Rippl-Rónay and Maillol at the Hungarian National Gallery, where visitors have to pay. As usual, the place was full and, though there were many tourists, the majority were Hungarians.

On Thursday I went to see the superb exhibition of John Singer Sargent portraits at the National Portrait Gallery; it was quite well attended and most of the visitors were local. This, I find, is quite normal: while the permanent collections, which are free at the point of entry, tend to be filled by tourists, the exhibitions that have to be paid for get a far higher proportion of local visitors.

Could it be that we should think counter-intuitively and accept that more people will visit museums and art galleries if (or when) they start charging for entry?