It seems to me that nothing succeeds in British public life better than failure. Take the case of Bernard Horrible-Howe, the former commissioner of the Metropolitan Police.

Since his retirement Horrible-Howe, who is still only sixty-one has been entitled to a taxpayer-funded pension with a pot worth a reported £6 million. This has enabled him to buy two luxury homes, one in Dorset and the other in Switzerland.

Earlier this week, when reporters visited to ask about the disastrous police inquiry into alleged VIP sex abuse which happened during his time in charge, he angrily ordered them to, ‘Leave my property immediately!’

During the shameful Operation Midland enquiry, £2.5 million of public money was wasted, and the lives of innocent men and their families torn apart but that does not seem to have worried Horrible-Howe. Since leaving the Met, he has accepted seven private sector positions. These include ‘consultant’ roles across industries as varied as banking (for HSBC), insurance (for a firm called Towergate), computing (Excession Technologies) and security (the cyber-security firm Glasswall) as well as Guardiar, a company that makes fences.

He’s also done ‘TV and broadcasting’ work for American network NBC, and is on the books of the production company, Tigerlily, for whom he recently made a Dispatches documentary about legalising cannabis.To the dismay of the civil liberties lobby, he’s also an ‘adviser’ to Carbyne, an Israeli tech firm seeking to sell controversial tracking devices to the UK Government. Meanwhile and somewhat ironically, given that he was the police chief who virtually criminalised contact between his officers and the Press, Hogan-Howe also ‘works’ at Powerscourt, a PR outfit offering ‘reputation management’ for powerful and often controversial clients. All this while he’s already taking an estimated £180,000-a-year from a public sector pension.

For a former Copper – even a very senior one – this cannot make sense. What does he know about building fences, let alone all the other things he is being ‘consulted’ on?

As a member of the House of Lords, Horrible-Howe is also entitled to expenses and he takes full advantage of that.

In February, he claimed £3,355, having attended Parliament twelve times. Over the past year, his expenses bill was £21,642, for eighty-two appearances. It seems he has realised how to make more easy money. Just turn up at the Lords and put in a claim.

Horrible-Howe has also pursued a lucrative sideline of public-speaking. He’s on the books of two agencies, Chartwell and the London Speaker Bureau who have arranged for him to give talks — believed to be for five-figure fees — to U.S. arms firms, Indian police officers and a gathering of lawyers at Italy’s Lake Como. Anyone who has witnessed his wooden performances at a lectern might justifiably wonder what they’re paying for. Pezazz, the man has none!

The websites of these agencies dub Horrible-Howe (they don’t actually call him that) as a man whose ‘career has been characterised by high achievement.’ What achievement damnit? He has overseen some of the biggest fiascos managed by the Met and in the process ruined a number of innocent lives with Operation ruddy Midland.

I have ranted about that before and the entire operation ought to have been scrapped within weeks. I know Horrible-Howe was egged on by Tom Watson but as Commissioner of the Met, he ought to have had the gumption to stand up to a mere politician.

The falsely accused politician, Harvey Proctor feels Horrible-Howe is ‘an exceptionally narcissistic and weak man’ whose decision to take so many private sector jobs has made him appear ‘too eager to join the gravy train rather than make good the damage over which he presided’ and that he appears to have ‘sought private sector jobs like a moth circling a light bulb.’

Says it all really! All these lucrative ‘jobs’ are merely rewards for catastrophic failure.

Going briefly back to the Google ‘camp’ I mentioned yesterday. I have no objection to the High and Mighty – they think so at any rate – enjoying themselves at a great party, but I do object to them lecturing the rest of us on how to run our own lives and in the process, benefit the world.

Take the Royal Twonk with the red hair. It transpires that to reach Sicily, he took a private jet and a helicopter in each direction. To make up for the carbon footprint (whatever that means) of his travel arrangements, he would need to plant one hundred and ninety thousand trees for each leg.

Get planting Mr Windsor and I would suggest you keep your shoes on this time. Feet are never pretty to look at.

How can I escape from the hypocrisy and cant of the climate change/global warming and other weather related zealots who seem to pervade daily life for the rest of us and would change the way we breathe if they could?

Climate change has always happened I’m afraid. I am no ‘flat earth theorist’ but I am reasonably well read and through the millennia, temperatures have fluctuated to a considerable degree. That is still happening and always will I’m afraid. Yes, Mankind is probably accelerating things, but that is because there are too ruddy many of us.

Now we learn that Google have staged a conference to discuss the matter and their guest list was a closely guarded secret. The idiotic ‘Royal,’ Prince Harry gave a barefoot speech to the delegates who were all highly important – at least in their own view – and very rich people. I wonder whether Harry’s lack of shoes was to emphasise the fact that he is but an ordinary fellow.

Only a few days ago this earnest pratwinkle told the world that he and Meghan were only going to have two children in order to ‘help the planet.’ To me that smacks of a calculated insult to those folk who enjoy large families. Now he gives what was described as a ‘passionate speech’ to a carefully selected audience of film stars, models and hyper wealthy businessmen.

Are any of them going to pay one iota of attention to what he so earnestly says? Not a chance I’m afraid. This allegedly green ‘camp’ was attended by hundreds of celebrities showing off to the rest of us – but many of them failed to leave their private jets at home.

No fewer than one hundred and fourteen gas-guzzling private jets flew in to nearby Palermo airport. There was also a veritable armada of luxury yachts plus helicopters, slightly smaller vessels and the like. The guests had to pay their own costs to get there, but once ashore, everything was paid for including a fleet of Maserati sports cars for them to explore the island of Sicily.

Apparently one of the speeches was by ‘supermodel’ Naomi Campbell about Nelson Mandela. I would have liked to hear that and wonder if she wore shoes. I am not one of the ‘Saint Mandela’ brigade I’m afraid and for all the peace-brokering he did in his final years, I can’t forget that he admitted planting a bomb in a crowded railways station. Had that gone off, he certainly would not have ended up as admired and revered as he was!

But back to the ‘camp’ in Sicily.

The event, created by Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin, sees some of the world’s wealthiest business leaders and tech gurus discussing various issues in morning sessions before relaxing in the Italian sunshine in the afternoon.

The camp – how can they call it that damnit? – is focussing on how to tackle global warming but one way would surely be for delegates to leave all their fancy transport behind.

One attendee said: ‘There will likely be discussions about online privacy, politics, human rights, and of course, the environment, which makes it highly ironic that this event requires 114 private jets to happen.’

Luxury megayacht the Andromeda, which is owned by billionaire Kiwi Graeme Hart has been spotted just off shore, as has Barry Diller’s sailing vessel Eos. David Geffen’s Rising Sun did swing by briefly on Monday to drop off a couple of pop stars, but then continued on its way up the Italian coast. These vessels give off as much in the way of carbon emissions as a large fleet of buses damnit!

On the final night, Google spends close to $100,000 renting the 2,500-year-old Valley of the Temples ruins for a concert and sit-down meal. How is this helping the world I wonder.

After morning sessions, afternoons are free for guests to relax around the complex and spa, with trips around the coast, to local wineries and to tourist hot spots on offer. How the other visitors must love that.

The resort where this ‘camp’ is held boasts two eighteen hole golf courses, a tennis academy and one of the largest spa complexes in all of Europe on its mile and a half of private coastline.

There are a number of suites and private rooms as well as three villas for guests to stay.

Those villas look out on to individual pools as well as the property’s massive infinity pool and stunning private beach, filled with imported white sand, a jetty and even a small carpet to take pampered stars into the crystal blue ocean waters. Otherwise I suppose they might get sand between their toes – yeeeugh!

Please folk, let us ordinary people get on with our lives without you flaunting your liberal green ideas in crass luxury. And if you really want to camp, come with me on one of my silly little adventures. Or stay in a military camp in a war zone. You won’t enjoy either experience but at least then, you can claim to have been in a camp.

Meanwhile, more than two hundred climate change protesters were left red-faced when they chained themselves to the wrong building in the City of London.

They had planned to stage a demonstration against the energy firm Drax, which wants to build a giant gas plant in Yorkshire.

They only discovered that Drax had moved offices after blocking the front and back entrance with a few of them chaining themselves to doors and windows. All these hapless idiots succeeded in doing was bring chaos to a leading renewable energy company from Denmark who had taken over the Drax building. One worker expressed sympathy towards their aim but added, it would help if they checked their facts.

For the record, Drax had moved to another building two blocks away and the protesters did find it eventually. I didn’t read what happened next because I was so busy shaking my head in wry despair at these silly fanatics.

Please spare us ordinary folk from all this nonsense.

I had lunch in Tavistock yesterday with a friend who like me, is a scribbler and public speaker. Extremely well known in this part of the world, Simon is also a former copper so we have quite a lot in common.

The middle-aged lady who brought our lunch recognised him and when he told her he couldn’t remember her, she recounted a tale of practical coppering.

At the age of three, her son stole something from a shop. Thoroughly incensed, she took him to the nearest police station where she asked Simon to lecture the boy. Simon did and not only did he lecture, but he took the child down to the cells and showed him what might lie in store for him if he continued to steal.

‘He is twenty-five now,’ she beamed at us, ‘and has never been in any trouble, even when his friends have. He remembers that lesson to this day and often comments on it, so thank you.’

It was a truly lovely moment and Simon looked pleased even though he brushed it off. As I commented to the lady, ‘that is an example of good, old-fashioned and practical coppering but it would not be allowed nowadays.’

Nor would it I’m afraid.

A recent report on front-line policing has found that senior officers across the country believe that modern recruits ‘are not prepared for the realities of policing.’

The Home Office, who are responsible for forty-three regions in England and Wales, were told that millennials’ inability to adapt to the tough work environment is creating a new challenge for trainers. The report came out just after Boris Johnson announced a recruitment drive to add twenty thousand bobbies to the beat. Huh! I wonder what sort of bobbies we will get.

In the report which took evidence from serving officers, one senior figure said that many recruits had ‘no idea what they’re coming into; they’ve lived in a society where they are wrapped up in cotton wool an awful lot . . . their mental health or their ability to cope with certain situations is just not evident from day one.’

Examples were also provided of recruitment interviews where candidates stated that they ‘do not like confrontation’ or were shocked by shift patterns that included nights and weekends. How ruddy pathetic is that? Why do they bother to even think of a police career?

The challenge is considered so serious that forces may have to change their working practices rather than expect the recruits to adapt to the job. That is patently ridiculous damnit! Let the little monsters get used to it or lower entrance criteria to include, practical, tough recruits with honest common sense rather than useless university degrees.

Policing has never been a career for ninnies but it certainly looks as though it is becoming such.

Elsewhere, Judge Sir Richard Henriques who led an enquiry into police handling of the Carl Beech fiasco has written that the senior coppers involved broke the law in obtaining search warrants and should be prosecuted. Yet only last week, the official police enquiry exonerated all those involved.

The police findings should be overruled and those senior cops should be brought to justice as soon as possible.

As should Labour’s deputy leader Tom Watson.

Oh for the days when coppers were respected, acted with sound common sense and often administered a form of practical justice that was not in any procedural manual, but worked.

That sort of coppering is what led to a Mother’s gratitude and a magical little moment over lunch yesterday. Well done Simon.

You know, I almost feel sorry for followers of the Labour Party. When they elected Jeremy Corbyn as their leader, I wondered if perhaps he would be a breath of fresh air in what was rapidly descending into a disorganised rabble. Instead he has left them even more disorganised than they were before. In fact, this past week has been a particularly bad one for them.

They greeted the election of Boris Johnson with a predictable wail of manufactured outrage and the usual slogans of class envy. Corbyn himself immediately bleated about the need for ‘a prime minister on the side of the many, not the few.’

What hypocritical tommytwaddle! In the narrow mindset of the Left, Johnson is the perfect target for this kind of propaganda because of his privileged upbringing and colourful record. Corbyn also complains that he was elected only by the Tory membership, not by the public so we need another general election. But although it seems vaguely unfair, it is ridiculous to pretend there is some kind of injustice in Johnson’s elevation to Downing Street. Britain has a parliamentary, not a presidential, system of governance. Party Leaders become prime ministers and there is no getting away from that.

In fact, since the creation of democracy however many centuries ago, the majority of British prime ministers have come to power without any general election.  If Corbyn really believed in the strength of his case, he could put down an immediate motion of no confidence in the new Government.

The fact that he hasn’t already done so exposes the weakness of his leadership. He is not a man ready for office, leading a united party.On the contrary, he is an embarrassing mediocrity, whose authority has collapsed and whose activists are at war with each other. With him in charge, it is Labour rather than the reinvigorated Tories who are terrified of going to the ballot box.

As it plummets in the polls, down to just 18 per cent in one recent survey, the party is now paying the price for having elected someone so unfit to rule and so divorced from the political mainstream. But for too long, his spectacular inadequacies were counterbalanced by the puerile mayhem that prevailed in the Conservative Government.

Yes he performed well in the election of 2017 but that wasn’t due to Corbyn’s own appeal but because Theresa Maybe totally botched her campaign, epitomised by her refusal to participate in televised debates.

The atmosphere has changed dramatically with new Tory leadership. Corbyn will now come under tremendous pressure, fuelled by Johnson’s charismatic, mocking style. My own opinion is that he will shrivel in the spotlight of intense scrutiny.

Profound disillusion is now spreading through his party’s ranks. One survey published last week revealed that confidence in his leadership has dropped by 24 points since March 2018, with more than 40 per cent of members saying he has done a bad job. Despair has also gripped Labour at Westminster, reflected in a string of defections by moderate MPs.

Only last week, highly respected frontbencher Gloria de Piero announced her resignation and said she would not be standing at the next general election because of the lack of tolerance in her party.

In the same vein, more than sixty Labour peers signed a newspaper advertisement that denounced Corbyn for creating ‘a toxic climate’ within his ranks.

Baroness Hayter, Labour’s deputy leader in the Lords, accused Corbyn and his cronies of exhibiting a bunker mentality reminiscent of ‘the last days of Hitler,’ a remark for which she was promptly sacked.

Much of the current anger within the party has focused on the reluctance of the leadership to deal vigorously with the anti-Semitism within Labour that makes a mockery of the party’s rhetoric about fighting racism, but there has been just as much fury over the leadership’s equivocal stance on Brexit, where Corbyn has sat on the fence so long he has alienated both Remainers and Brexiteers.

It seems highly likely now that Labour will be crushed in a pincer movement, with Johnson on one side, leading the charge for Brexit, and the Liberal Democrats on the other, acting as the voice of the pro-EU brigade.

Under Corbyn Labour is heading nowhere except the wilderness. In contrast to the new Prime Minister, who exudes energy and optimism, the Labour leader comes across as frail, inadequate and under the control of hardline radicals.

What Labour needs is not a general election but the removal of Jeremy Corbyn.

Back in my Africa, the president of Tanzania has caused consternation in conservation circles by inaugurating the construction of a huge dam in the middle of the beautiful Selous national park.

Various eminent conservation groups have opposed the Stiegler’s Gorge project as it will flood areas containing one of the most significant concentrations of elephant and black rhino left in the world.

President Magufuli called the project ‘the start of economic liberation,’ saying the reserve, which is also a haven for cheetahs and giraffes has been considered a potential energy source for decades. Only one in ten households in Tanzania has access to the national grid and electricity prices are high.

“Beginning today, this will indicate that Tanzania is an independent country… and not a poor country,” Magufuli burbled to the media. “It’s time to benefit from our national resources.“

The scheme is expected to take three years to finish and will mean chopping down more than two and a half million trees to flood an area covering about twelve hundred square kilometres, including the habitats of the reserve’s remaining black rhinos.

I am by no means a ‘bunny hugger’ but this is disastrous news, both for wildlife and the people of Tanzania themselves. The dam will threaten the livelihoods of tens of thousands of folk living downstream, who depend on the river for agriculture and fisheries.

Last month the InternationaL Union for the Conservation of Nature called for an immediate halt to logging and other preparations, warning of irreversible damage if it went ahead. 

“It would cut the heart out of the Selous reserve, with catastrophic impacts on the site’s wildlife and habitats,” said Peter Shadie, of the IUCN’s World Heritage Programme.

After the inauguration, the Worldwide Fund for Nature said the game reserve was of extraordinary importance and urged Tanzania’s government to consider ‘less harmful energy alternatives.’

But earlier this month, Magufuli downplayed fears for the environment, saying that by providing energy, the dam would deter locals from felling trees for fuel. How? Tanzanian villagers can’t afford electric appliances to take the place of firewood I’m afraid.

“I want to reassure everyone this project in fact aims to promote the environment,” Magufuli whittered to the media. “Also, it’s just a small part of the reserve – just 3 per cent of the total area.”

But a hugely important area for wildlife Mr President.

The Elephant Protection Initiative, whoever they might be said the fact that a leading wildlife country was ‘prepared to contemplate drowning their natural crown jewels in pursuit of megawatts must serve as a serious wake-up call to everyone in conservation.’

‘Destroying habitat may present the illusion of short-term economic gain, but in the long run is counterproductive, not just for wildlife, but also people and economies.”

Fancy verbiage but what they mean is that yet more of Africa’s shrinking habitat for wildlife is being destroyed and although the animals will suffer most in the short term, tourists will no longer visit Africa if there is no wildlife left for them to see and photograph.

Most African countries, including Tanzania rely heavily on tourism to keep them afloat.

I have not been able to find out who is paying for this project but would bet a pound to a pinch of the proverbial that it is the Chinese. They are intent on taking over Africa and think nothing of doling out monetary favours to politicians and political groups, but they always want their pound of flesh in return.

After Africa it will be the rest of the world, but nobody seems prepared to face up to this.

I often complain about British aid money being sent to Africa but the latest news from Malawi backs up my complaints.

Britain gives that impoverished country £65 million a year in aid, yet the current president’s wife with her entourage of aides came to Britain last week on a private visit that set Malawi – and indirectly Britain – back at least eighty thousand pounds – and that is a conservative estimate.

Gertrude Mutharika came here to witness her son’s ruddy graduation ceremony damnit! She and her entourage of at least seven aides have been staying at the Dorchester hotel, where rooms cost from £700 to £900 a night, with a price of up to £5,500 for suites. I don’t suppose they travelled economy class either!

Reports of the trip have understandably caused outrage in Malawi, where ordinary people survive on an average income of little more than £1 a day. Angry protesters have taken to the streets demanding that Mrs Mutharika return the money spent on the jaunt, and also to allege fraud in the country’s elections in May, which resulted in Peter Mutharika retaining power.

Mrs Mutharika flew in to see her son Tadikira Mafubza – the president’s stepson – receive his degree from the University of Greenwich last Thursday. The Malawian authorities admit the trip was government-funded and that Mrs Mutharika’s party included seven aides. She also hired a UK-based security team to accompany her. That won’t have been cheap!

To make matters worse, she was accompanied by Judith Chimulirenji, the wife of Malawi’s vice-president, who travelled with her own entourage, the cost also picked up by the Malawian government.

One member of the entourage told reporters that the week-long trip was ‘the best time of my life’ because ‘everything is paid for.’

So will Britain either demand that the Malawian president pay for the trip himself or threaten to withdraw aid in the future?

I won’t be holding my breath!

Yesterday the vile paedophile fantasist Carl Beech was sentenced to eighteen years in prison. Mr Justice Goss whittered on about it being a serious sentence but was it really? Beech’s allegations ruined a number of lives, cost the taxpayer two and a half million pounds and seriously tarnished the reputation of the Metropolitan Police.

Beech will be eligible for parole in nine years while his innocent victims will spend the rest of their lives under a cloud despite being exonerated. As Lord Bramall, now in his nineties and one of those accused by Beech of heinous offences commented yesterday, ‘Mud sticks.’

And it certainly does. Take the case of Simon Warr who was a teacher at boarding schools in Suffolk for most of his career, taking language classes and rugby with older pupils. He was 59 and looking forward to retirement when his life changed, with a bang on the door one day at 07:15.

“Four police officers swept past me, pushing me on to the cabinets, and the fifth one read me my rights,” he told Victoria Derbyshire on the BBC.

A former pupil had alleged he had been touched inappropriately after a PE lesson 30 years earlier.

“I said to the police, ‘I don’t teach PE, I don’t teach 12-year-olds games’,” he said, “but they just wouldn’t listen.”

His arrest took place in 2012, just months after the Jimmy Savile scandal. Since then, 6,617 suspects have been identified by detectives investigating historical child abuse allegations. That is surely a horrifying statistic.

Operation Hydrant was set up in 2014 to oversee claims of “non-recent” abuse in institutions or by people of public prominence. Some 7,396 possible crimes on its database have now had a final outcome. Of those 2,043 – or 29% – ended in a conviction, but faced with a huge increase in allegations, critics say police and prosecutors are often too quick to believe victims’ accounts before they can be properly investigated.

In Mr Warr’s case, details of his arrest were broadcast on the BBC that evening. His diary, photos, computer and phone were confiscated and he says, used by officers to contact numerous former pupils.

“The police tried desperately to get others to come forward.” Mr Warr told the programme. “When they went to see former pupils… it was made quite clear I was going to be prosecuted and they were looking for people strong enough to say I’d done similar things to them. They had no intention of getting to the bottom of what happened. It certainly turns the whole edict of ‘innocent until proven guilty’ on its head. Police officers should have an open mind and execute the normal tests and investigations.”

Six months afte Warr was arrested, he was told a second former pupil had come forward alleging he was abused. Both complainants had been classmates and friends. Both had already been awarded compensation in a different abuse case at the same school. What a surprise! Warr began receiving threatening emails. A Facebook post said if he killed himself it would be the ‘best Christmas present ever.’

By that stage, Warr’s life was a misery: “I wasn’t eating, I wasn’t sleeping. I was a wreck.”

It took over two years for the case to come to trial and when it did, the jury took a mere forty minutes to find Warr not guilty on all seven counts. The poor bloke broke down with relief.

“I’ll never get those years back,” he says. “But it’s not just the fact that my life has been ruined. One of the biggest tragedies of cases like mine is that it makes it more difficult for people who have actually been abused to be believed.”

Needless to say, Simon Warr left teaching after his trial, saying the publicity made it difficult to get another job.

“The fact that I was accused of paedophilia will live with me for the rest of my life.”

Other, better-known figures have been put through the same sort of hell and to my mind, it is solely because we have a politically correct justice system and a fairly pathetic police force.

I understand that the new Home Secretary, Priti Patel is of the old-school, flog ’em and hang ’em brigade and I see nothing wrong with that. The public need to be protected from spurious accusations and they need to know that they are protected. The lure of easy compensation money and the knowledge that however feeble their story might be, they will be believed by the police, hauls the pathetic oxygen thieves out of the woodwork and ruins the lives of innocent people.

If Priti Patel can change the system, I am right behind her and if she can ensure that the Deputy Leader of the Labour Party, Tom Watson is prosecuted for his part in the Carl Beech debacle, I will recommend her for sainthood! Instead of which, if Corbyn is thrown out or falls on his sword as seems ever more likely, Watson will become the leader of Her Majesty’s loyal opposition.

Where is the justice in that?

What is it about the weather in Britain. I know it is a wee bit unpredictable, but it provides the main topic of conversation for the British and when it is in any way out of the ordinary, everything seems to break down.

It was certainly warm yesterday which made a nice change from the norm, but flights were cancelled, the railways almost came to a standstill and even the new Prime Minister was largely forgotten about, except perhaps in the House of Commons where he seems to have completely flattened – verbally of course – his opposite number, Jeremy Corbyn.

Back to the weather and the trains though. It will be Autumn soon so the trains will again have difficulty and thousands of folks will have their lives disrupted through ‘leaves on the line’ then a couple of months later, it will snow and the railways will fail again. Yesterday they seemed to think that the tracks might buckle in the heat – it wasn’t even forty degrees damnit! – but railway tracks are built to withstand high temperatures. Aren’t they? British railway franchises must surely use the same tracks as systems elsewhere yet one never hears about hot weather disrupting life in other countries. Even in particularly hot countries, trains and aeroplanes still come and go.

This is supposed to be a developed nation and rail travel is hellishly expensive so why on earth isn’t something done to prevent this sort of nonsense?

In Switzerland they have another weather problem which local people are tackling themselves. Residents who live near the endangered Rhone glacier have been covering it with a huge thermal blanket to protect it from the summer heat. Every spring since 2009, locals who live near the glacier trek up the Swiss Alps to cover it in white blankets. These are stuffed with a heavy-duty fleece material which insulates the ice and reflects back the sunlight. Pretty hard ion the eyes I should imagine.

These ‘blankets’ cover around five acres of the retreating glacier and are left on from spring until autumn, when the ice field is most vulnerable. Seemingly this prevents some of the snow and ice from thawing in the summer sun that has already wreaked damage to the Rhone and other glaciers in the area. 

Over the last 10 years the glacier has apparently lost an average of 33ft of thickness with the melting water forming a lake that has been growing in size in the past decade. The ice mass, which 11,500 years ago covered the majority of Switzerland, has apparently 4,600ft since 1856 or so the scientific community would have us believe.

Scientists say the process of covering the glacier can reduce the rate at which the ice recedes by between 50 and 70 per cent. But then what? Weather patterns are undoubtedly changing as they have changed for millennia and I fear that there is nothing Mankind can do to prevent global warming from taking place. Glib political promises to cut this or that out of life will achieve nothing against the forces of Nature and all the protests in the world won’t help.

Talking of protests and protesters, I mentioned Zoe Jones in a rant a week or so ago. She was the Extinction Rebellion ‘eco warrior’ who cried crocodile tears to a Bristol radio reporter when she was told that a motorist had been prevented from seeing his dying father by the XR protests.

Now it turns out that Ms Jones is a long way from the passionate believer in a cause that she claims to be. On social media she flaunts her ecologically unsound jet-setting, uploading photographs of herself skiing, posing at the Victoria Falls, and in skydiving kit at an airfield.

Other exotic locations enjoyed by the protesting lass from Shrewsbury include a trip to Egypt and a bungee jump over the Nile, a safari in Uganda, holidays in Namibia, France and New Zealand. Emphasising her soft spot for environment-damaging travel on Twitter, she wrote: ‘Impromptu trip to Paris… YES PLEASE’.

Miss Jones’s boastful social media pictures have led to some folk – including me -accusing her of double standards by preaching to others while flying around the world.  After all, you can hardly complain about the impact of travelling on the environment and then swan around by aeroplane. I’m afraid that is complete and utter hypocrisy.

One of the XR organisers, Robert Boardman-Pattinson has also come under fire for advocating environmentally friendly living while flying all over the world. He has also posted pictures onto Instagram from numerous skiing holidays, posed in front of the Leaning Tower of Pisa as well of pictures of palm fringed exotic travels. 

It turns out that Miss Jones and her family are avid Corbyn supporters and hugely anti Conservative as well as climate change protesters. I wonder if that is significant?

So after weeks of arguments, insults and speculation, it is settled. Boris Johnson is the new Prime Minister. I would like to think he will be allowed to get on with the job, but I fear the biggest obstacle to that will be his own colleagues in Parliament.

On the Politics Live show yesterday not half an hour after the result was announced, the leader of the Scottish Nationalists in Westminster, Ian Blackford was vowing to bring Johnson down at whatever the cost. What an obstructive, self-important prat the man is. No, not Johnson but Blackford. He couldn’t even out argue Theresa Maybe at the weekly PMQs so I hope Johnson will quickly put him in his place.

Labour have been ominously quiet so far, but Tory ministers seem to be resigning en masse before they are fired and I fear they will be as obstructive as Blackford from the back benches. Do none of them ever think about the folk who actually voted them into their cushy jobs – the voters like you and me? I fear not. We are courted and given numerous promises until they are actually ensconced in power, then we are conveniently forgotten.

I have my doubts about Johnson. He was a disaster as Foreign Secretary after all, but at least he has personality and will hopefully stand up to the bureaucratic and unelected charlatans in Europe. They won’t like him but won’t be able to bully him either.

My morning trawl through the newspapers was a real treat today and showed just how mixed up and divided this country is. I am all for people having differing views, but the papers today were either enthusiastically pro Johnson or virulently against him. There was no middle ground and no reasoned argument either for or against. It was all hot air and woffle.

For God’s sake, give the man a chance. If he makes a mess of things, he can be booted out in a general election but at least let him have a bit of breathing space. We all need a resolution to this Brexit mess and if Johnson delivers some sort of reasonable outcome, he will have done a hell of a lot more than his predecessor. I voted for Brexit along with over seventeen million others. The leave vote won the argument, but despite numerous promises to bring Brexit about, we are still foundering in a morass of argument and obfuscation. I am sure I am not the only one who is sick to the back teeth of the political classes. Whatever they might claim to the contrary, there is currently very little if any sense of democracy in the supposedly United Kingdom.

In many ways, Johnson reminds me of Trump. Both men are show offs and both put their foot in their mouths with awesome regularity and in so doing offend a number of people. However, whether one likes him or loathes him – again there doesn’t seem to be a middle line – Trump has lived up to his pre election promises and again, that is a hell of a lot more than his predecessor managed. Give Boris Johnson a chance to do the same for the sake of us all.

Theresa Maybe meanwhile has managed to offend me yet again on her last full day as prime minister. Firstly, she has extended the ‘sugar tax’ to include milkshakes. Now I very much enjoy the occasional milkshake – probably a sad confession from a regular boozist – and object to paying more for my treat. I don’t need protection at my advanced age damnit! I have looked after myself for a very long time and am neither obese nor unhealthy.

Then – Heaven forbid – the government announced yesterday that smoking WILL be eliminated in this country by 2030. Why damnit? I have enjoyed my pipe since I was eighteen years old and wanting to look older than I was. It has kept me sane in difficult or troubled times and I refuse to give it up. It is easy for people living in cosseted comfort to rail against the tobacco industry but for folk on the breadline, smoking is their only solace. Look at photographs of people in war zones or anywhere life is cheap. Cigarettes keep them going, whether they be commercially manufactured or mere wisps of tobacco-like substance wrapped in any paper they can find.

The government green paper say that this is part of a range of measures to tackle the causes of ‘preventable ill health’ and claim that promoting physical activity, developing guidelines on sleep and targeting those at risk of diabetes are also priorities in their plans. They also want to extend tooth cleaning in children damnit! Surely that is the responsibility of parents?

Huh! They go on to claim that men and women in this country spend over a fifth of their lives in ill health – 19 years for women and 16 for men. Those in deprived areas experience the longest periods of poor health.

Of course they ruddy well do but all the nannying legislation in the world is not going to change that. I don’t suppose I will still be alive in 2030 but if I am, I shall still be puffing contentedly on my corncob.

Sorry Mrs Maybe but you and your army of hectoring nannies will not stop that. So there!

With all the hullabaloo over the Tory leadership contest, government rebellions, Brexit and the election of that fatuous little lass to the Lib Dem leadership, one particular national disgrace has almost slipped from public view.

Yesterday, a fantasist called Carl Beech – a.k.a. Nick – was found guilty on numerous accounts of perverting the course of justice. He will be sentenced in due course but if there is any real justice in this country, should spend the rest of his life in prison for the lives he has ruined. However I am not holding my breath.

In 2014 Beech approached the Metropolitan Police with lurid tales of paedophile rings in the upper echelons of British society. He claimed to have been abused, to have witnessed others being abused and even to have seen three boys being murdered. During hours of questioning, he broke down on numerous occasions and one would have thought that experienced coppers would have seen through his story. After all, anybody who has been in The Job for any length of time will have come across many fantasists seeking a bit of public attention and Beech could not produce any evidence – not a shred of it.

Yet despite the lack of evidence, the police swallowed his tale hook, line and sinker. They launched Operation Midland to investigate Beech’s claims and sixteen months later, the operation was wound up without having made a single arrest and having cost we poor taxpayers in excess of a cool two million pounds.

It’s still hard to believe Beech was taken so seriously for so long and by experienced coppers.

The irony is that the Beech was himself a danger to children. At the time he was ‘helping’ detectives, he was viewing child pornography, making him a paedophile and a dangerous fantasist.

Money was one motivating factor in all this. Beech was awarded £22,000 in criminal injuries compensation by falsely claiming he had suffered serious injuries as a result of having been sexually and physically abused as a child.

In his devastating critique of Operation Midland, published in November 2016, former High Court judge Richard Henriques identified forty-three basic failings in the police investigation. But the most fundamental of these was ‘believing Nick at the outset.’

Yet not a single officer has been disciplined by the Met. In fact, three officers involved in Operation Midland were allowed to retire before the official enquiry had ended.

How on earth are we meant to trust the ruddy police any more?

Ironically bur sadly, we would never have heard of Carl Beech had it not been for Labour’s deputy leader Tom Watson, who a number of newspapers at the time christened the Nonce Finder General. Although he has slimmed down and smartened himself up as Deputy Leader of a major party, in those days he was a corpulent, vociferous parliamentarian intent on discrediting his political opponents.

Seven years ago he embarked on a vicious vendetta, smearing Conservative politicians and other Establishment figures as paedophiles and serial rapists, without any evidence whatsoever. And he was allowed to get away with it!

Watson was Beech’s main supporter, using this evil man’s lies as a weapon in his personal mission to defame leading Tories by accusing them of some of the most disgusting crimes imaginable.

His disgraceful behaviour has ruined the lives of distinguished public servants and their families. Watson’s victims included not just former Tory treasurer Lord McAlpine but ex-Home Secretary Leon Brittan and war hero Lord Bramall, a former head of the Armed Forces and a far better man than Beech or Watson could ever be. In 2012, two years before he discovered Carl Beech, Watson used Parliamentary privilege to claim there was a ‘powerful paedophile network linked to Parliament and No 10’. He then made allegations of sex abuse at a North Wales children’s home, which sparked a media frenzy and emboldened Sally Bercow, the Squeaker’s publicity-loving wife, to name Lord McAlpine on Twitter as one of the guilty men.

McAlpine was completely innocent and successfully brought a case for defamation against Bercow and broadcasters stupid enough to repeat and the false allegations. He was not a well man when the accusations surfaced and died just over a year later. Did the assault on his reputation hasten his death? We will never know.

The McAlpine scandal however didn’t deter Watson from his crusade against prominent Tories. He wrote to Prime Minister David Cameron, suggesting that organised abuse of children may have taken place in Downing Street during the Thatcher years.

He also charged that anyone counselling caution about these claims was a ‘friend of the paedophile.’ Well that included me I’m afraid. The entire story stank to high heaven from the start. Edward Heath was named as one of the so-called abusers when he was prime minister and that scenario was manifestly impossible. Prime Ministers have close bodyguards and it would not have been feasible for Heath to get away with any such criminal shenanigans.

When Carl Beech first made his allegations, Watson worked closely with a so-called news agency, one of whose reporters showed Beech pictures of prominent figures to help him identify his ‘abusers.’ That news agency has since been discredited and dissolved – I wonder why. Watson then badgered the police and the Crown Prosecution Service to investigate the false allegations made by Beech. Leon Brittan and others had their homes raided and were interviewed under caution, although they were never charged.

According to the Labour-supporting Sunday Mirror, Watson said he had been in contact with someone who alleged a former ‘top minister in Margaret Thatcher’s government’ had ‘regularly abused boys.’ After Brittan died, without his name having been cleared (even though Scotland Yard had concluded months earlier that he was innocent) Watson continued to repeat allegations that the former Home Secretary was guilty of multiple child rapes.

He also claimed to have spoken to a man and a woman who said they had been raped by Brittan. It turned out that the woman in question was a Labour activist with mental health problems!

At one stage the Met appeared to be taking their orders directly from Watson. Under then Home Secretary Theresa Maybe’s favourite cop, Bernard Hyphen-Howe, the police set up the ruinously expensive Operation Midland, which mounted dawn raids, dragged the reputations of innocent men through the mud and left their families distraught.

Midland was eventually wound up without a single arrest being made. Yet the relevant cops still declared that Beech’s ludicrous allegations were ‘credible and true.’

All this from experienced coppers? No wonder violent criminals prosper in this country!

And why hasn’t Watson been prosecuted for his own fabrications?

It doesn’t give one a great deal of faith in British justice I’m afraid.

Yes I know it is usually referred to as political correctness, but by golly it is becoming madder by the day.

In sunny California where general insanity often seems to be looked on as normal, Berkeley City Council has banned local government workers from using the terms ‘he’ or ‘she’ and have instead adopted a ruling that employees must use ‘they’ or ‘them’ as an alternative. The legislation was passed unanimously among council members on its first reading and as a result will also see thousands of the Californian city’s manhole covers instead referred to as ‘maintenance holes’. The term ‘craftsmen’ will also be banned and changed to ‘craftspeople’ as an instruction to workers in the US city.

The motion read: “In recent years, broadening societal awareness of transgender and gender-nonconforming identities has brought to light the importance of non-binary gender inclusivity.

‘Therefore, it is both timely and necessary to make the environment of City Hall and the language of city legislation consistent with the principles of inclusion.”

What on earth does that garbled verbiage mean I wonder. I am a student of English and have always loved the language but that tangle of meaningless gobbledegook takes some understanding – even for Californians.

As a result of the ruling though, more than two dozen terms will be changed in the city’s code as soon as the measure is fully implemented. That means more expense as numerous forms and notices will also have to be amended in order to appease a tiny handful of nutcases. I wonder what word they are going to dream up that will replace ‘blackmail.’

Now there is a thought to ponder!

A couple of days ago I ranted about the London Mayor Sadiq Khan and I see President Trump rather agrees with my assessment.

It all came about when the Metropolitan Police twitter account was hacked and a series of obscene and peculiar tweets allegedly emanating from that august crime-fighting (sometimes) body assailed the tender ears of subscribers.

Trumpy’ bless him immediately laid the blame squarely at Sadiq Khan’s door and claimed that the capital just is not safe under the governance of this Mayor. Quoting a tweet from Katie Hopkins – she has been very quiet of late – who said that officers ‘have lost control of London streets,’ and ‘lost control of their twitter account too.,’ the President wrote, ‘with the incompetent Mayor of London you will never have safe streets.’

That does seem a little harsh Mr Trump, but I would agree with the man’s incompetence. He really is a wee bit out of his depth but Londoners voted him in I’m afraid. They have only themselves to blame for the anarchy and violence that prevails at the moment.

Two subjects dominate the newspaper columns today and they are inevitably, the escalation of violent crime and the departure of Theresa Maybe from office. Let’s deal with crime first.

It would seem that Britain is suffering an unprecedented surge in murder and knife crime in general. London alone has had more than sixty deaths on its streets in 2019. Most victims are young men and the police seem powerless to prevent this.

Yet the response of politicians to this carnage has been pathetic, most of it characterised by handwringing, buck-passing and excuse-making. None of them is more guilty of inaction than London Mayor,  Sadiq Khan who has now been in office for more than three years. He pontificates a great deal but doesn’t seem to have the faintest clue as to how crime should be tackled.

This week he blamed the butchery on poverty and Tory cuts. Having moaned about ‘lack of employment’ and claimed that the worst crime rates occur in the most deprived areas, he argued that the wave of violence is ‘an appalling side-effect of increasing inequality and alienation caused by years of government austerity and neglect.’

As you might have gathered, I have no particular time for the current crop of politicians in power but Khan’s words were all too typical of the fashionable sociological claptrap which has badly undermined the fight against crime. Like so many others he seems to want to absolve offenders of responsibility for their actions by painting them as the helpless victims of economic circumstances. This is basically a form of political blackmail saying that London’s youth should be given more or they will go on killing.

But this is absurd I’m afraid. We are not living in a land of pitiless destitution where all the disadvantaged can do is stab or starve. In fact, Britain’s economy is booming at the moment. Wages are rising at their fastest rate for eleven years and for all Khan’s whingeing about joblessness, unemployment stands at 3.8 percent, the lowest rate since 1974.

It is particularly idiotic to bleat about London, one of the richest places on earth with a wealth of work and leisure opportunities. Few places in the world offer so many free and subsidised activities, buttressed by an unrivalled transport infrastructure. 

And contrary to Khan’s complaints, the capital receives far more support from the Government than any other region in England. London state schools for example receive £5,872 per pupil, whereas those in the north-west get £4,912 per pupil.

By trying to link murder and Tory spending decisions, Khan might feel he is boxing clever, but in reality, he is proving what an out of touch pratwinkle he really is. 

Britain has experienced real poverty and turmoil in its past without soaring violence. In 1941 for example, when the public had to cope with rationing and German bombing, George Orwell wrote ‘the gentleness of English civilisation is its most marked characteristic,’ words that sound all too poignant now we are governed by ineffectual, hand-wringing mediocrities like Sadiq Khan. Politicians need to stand up to thugs and criminals, not give them everything they want. No matter what the political elite so often say, violence is not a ‘public health’ issue. It is basic criminality and should be punished not rewarded.

Instead of indulging petty thugs the authorities should be putting more police on the streets, bringing back stop-and-search, enforcing the law, breaking up the gangs and, above all, imposing much tougher jail terms on dangerous offenders.

Only by regaining its authority can the state finally begin to wage a successful war against crime. I won’t be holding my breath I’m afraid. I don’t believe the current crop of politically correct and horribly ineffectual politicians have the gumption to act as they should.

This is Theresa Maybe’s last weekend in power so how will history view her I wonder. In my humble opinion – and a few others, not so humble – she was hopeless but she wasn’t useless. Her party needed her when Cameron fled the chicken coop.

When she was first elected leader, the Conservatives hoped that she might emulate her own heroine, Margaret Thatcher and secure a reasonable deal with the EU through steely resolve. When she called the snap election, they hailed her as a genius for having the gumption to exploit Labour’s weaknesses and expand her majority. Huh! I commented during the campaign that she was the one holding the Tories back and giving Labour the advantage. On her few television appearances, she looked as though she was there under protest rather than trying to win votes.

Yet although it is difficult to imagine now, support for her was smarmily effusive. She was regarded as a real asset to her party. ‘This former lukewarm remainer has truly been the servant of a newly sovereign people,’ wrote Dean Godson, director of the right wing think tank, Policy Exchange, ‘Her tone has captured the moment … Her own form of provincial respectability is now aligned to the needs of those ‘people from somewhere’ who voted leave.’

Claptrap Sir! I don’t think she was ever interested in leaving.

The media in general seemed convinced that Labour under Corbyn had no chance and saw attributes in Maybe that did not exist. The closer they were to power, it seems, the less they could actually see. At 9.53pm on election night Piers Morgan tweeted: ‘As exit poll looms, I repeat my prediction: Conservatives to win by 90-100 seat majority.’ At 9.57pm Steve Hawkes, deputy political editor of the Sun, tweeted: ‘Rumour Tories could be looking at 400 seats.’

How could these supposedly in-the-know journalists get it so wrong?

At 10pm we learned that she would likely lose her majority altogether. Even after that disastrous night though, she was useful to the Tories as a figurehead – keeping the seat warm for someone better while making sure that Corbyn did not occupy it. It is worth remembering that they did not get rid of her – nobody better did come along. She resigned as an abject failure.

Theresa Maybe was probably the best candidate for the job at the time. The alternative was Andrea Leadsom, but she had neither the know-how nor the personality to lead a government and there was nobody else, which is a sad reflection on modern politics.

Maybe probably did a better job than her predecessor, David Cameron, but that is not saying much. I don’t trust her likely successor, Boris Johnson and the other alternative is Jeremy Hunt, another plastic man, but surely neither of them can be as bad as Theresa May – can they?

Only time will tell I’m afraid. Come back Screaming Lord Such!