The Bewilderness

Operation Chakush: the Kajaki Stalemate

The death rate in Helmand province, Afghanistan, is now reaching the same levels as Basra. The same number of soldiers have died in both provinces although proportionately, the death rate in Iraq is higher. The British Army is currently engaged in Operation Chakush (Hammer):

Operation Chakush, or Hammer, is part of a wider plan to clear insurgents from the areas surrounding the Kajaki Dam, a project which will provide electricity for most of southern Helmand and improve the lives of more than 1.5 million farmers and civilians if and when it is completed.

Efforts to harness the power of the Helmand River and its tributaries have been hindered deliberately by the Taliban, who fear that positive improvements to infrastructure will deprive them of support in their own heartland.

Some of the fiercest fighting in Helmand since 2001 has taken place near the dam as successive UK battlegroups pushed back Taliban outposts, only to have the insurgents return when they withdrew from captured compounds and villages.

We have read about a succession of operations designed to secure the area around the Kajai dam, although none have prevented the Taliban from asserting their insurgency. Reconstruction is a vital goal but this may be a dam too far. The effects of restarting Kajaki can be quantified:

Water, harnessed to irrigate Afghanistan's degraded agricultural systems, is key to the country's economic reconstruction. The UN has estimated that productivity could be doubled on the land at present farmed and another 10% (some 24,000 square miles) could be brought under the plough by successful irrigation.

Afghanistan has the water to exploit in rainfall from its mountain ranges but only some 15% is successfully harnessed. Without effective irrigation, a mainstream agricultural economy cannot be developed to compete with illicit poppy production, which breeds crime and corruption and strengthens the Taliban and other jihadis. The operation to clear insurgents from the area around the Kajaki Dam in Helmand is symbolic of what the US and Nato troops are trying to achieve in Afghanistan and of what the Taliban desperately want not to happen. Securing the area and repairing the dam would improve the lives and livelihoods of more than one million Afghanis. A failed mission would serve the purposes of the Taliban and al Qaeda and its proxies, which are intent on turning Afghanistan into a failed state where the western allies would be sucked dry in a so-called bleeding war.

The vicious circle of insufficient military resources and a resurgent Taliban, financed from the tribal areas of Pakistan, leaves the Kajaki strategy at stalemate. Additional troops are required: yet NATO allies do have the stomach to fight for Afghanistan. If we cannot gain more troops, we need a better strategy.

One Insurgency Ends, we still fight two others

Operation Banner comes to an end now. This is the longest serving campaign for the British Army, and involves the operations in Northern Ireland to end the war against the Irish Republican Army. Security will be handed over to the Police Service of Northern Ireland. The Scotsman has a list of varied statistics including the profits of peace:

60,000 the amount, in pounds, by which house prices have risen over the past two years in Belfast's Shankill Road

Web 2.0: UK start-ups

The Guardian identified ten start-ups in the mature dot-com market for start-ups and noted that speaking English forces UK companies to be far more competitive, as they have to lock horns with their US counterparts.

Britain's dotcom scene is also interesting for its distinct lack of "me-too" websites – copycats of successful services (often from Silicon Valley) that spring up looking for cash. Whereas continental entrepreneurship is littered with imitations of American services (translating an existing concept into German) businesses in the UK are fully aware that rip-offs don't cut the mustard when you already speak the same language.

Most of the companies base their business models upon social networking and the nexus of ideas called Web 2.0, in niche areas such as frequent travellers or loans. My favouites were in recruitment (Zupka), alternate reality gaming (Mindcandy), online identity management (Garlik) and user-generated local information (Trusted Places).

Web 2.0: UK start-ups

The Guardian identified ten start-ups in the mature dot-com market for start-ups and noted that speaking English forces UK companies to be far more competitive, as they have to lock horns with their US counterparts.

Britain's dotcom scene is also interesting for its distinct lack of "me-too" websites – copycats of successful services (often from Silicon Valley) that spring up looking for cash. Whereas continental entrepreneurship is littered with imitations of American services (translating an existing concept into German) businesses in the UK are fully aware that rip-offs don't cut the mustard when you already speak the same language.

Most of the companies base their business models upon social networking and the nexus of ideas called Web 2.0, in niche areas such as frequent travellers or loans. My favouites were in recruitment (Zupka), alternate reality gaming (Mindcandy), online identity management (Garlik) and user-generated local information (Trusted Places).

The Summer Campaign for a Referendum

If the government reneges on a manifesto commitment, private initiative should not be ruled out:

The Conservatives could back a privately funded referendum on the new European Union treaty if Gordon Brown refuses to allow the British people the final say, William Hague, the shadow foreign secretary, said yesterday.

Mr Hague said it could be "a good idea'' but was "not a substitute" for an official referendum as promised by the Government at the last election.....a growing coalition of up to 40 rebel Labour MPs, some trade unions, Conservative Eurosceptics and business leaders are preparing a summer campaign to put the case for a referendum.

Legal Niceties

Is the independence of the judiciary all it appears? One method for bringing judges to heel is through the expedient of raising or lowering the amount of resources that they can command. Like all state financed bodies, they are ultimately dependent upon the exchequer.

The relationship between the judiciary and the Ministry of Justice will deteriorate without the executive deliberately asserting its power. The Lord Chancellor, Jack Straw retains the power to appoint judges and, desperate to save money, has frozen appointments. Short-term cost cutting measures have the counterproductive effect of increasing costs in the longer term.

The Times has learnt that Jack Straw, the Justice Secretary, received a list of approved candidates to fill the growing number of vacancies for Crown Court judges some weeks ago But Mr Straw has not indicated how many appointments he will make nor when he will announce them.

Retired judges are being pressed into service, and part-time recorders are being repeatedly asked to serve for longer periods. Such ad hoc measures save money because the Government does not have to pay holiday allowance or pension contributions for retired or part-time judges.

As the criminal justice system struggles to cope, serious cases are being put back until 2008 and overcrowded remand prisons are holding record numbers of inmates.

The Ministry of Justice denied these allegations and stated that delays were not caused by vacancies.

However, the Ministry of Justice admitted that there were still unfilled posts, but said that "all businesses have vacancies".

Does this mean that our trials will be outsourced, since companies would prove more efficient than this Ministry. Perhaps the government are preparing for private sector arbitration services.

Despatches from the state front

Here are a few of the stories pervasive to our dysfunctional state where incompetence is rewarded and initiative discouraged. Patients who are 108 are given eighteen months to wait for a hearing aid, and hospital trusts then hide behind bureaucratese:

Eastern and Coastal Kent Primary Care Trust said: "We cannot comment on individual cases but we are reducing waiting times.

"The priority is given to patients who do not have an existing hearing aid but we do accept our service needs improving.

"We apologise to any patient kept waiting for a new or replacement hearing aid."

Lack of common sense is coupled with the lack of supply.

The NHS is suffering from a chronic shortage of specialist beds which means seriously injured patients are having to wait for days in severe pain, according to a leading surgeon.

He said the hospital system was paralysed by red tape and funding disputes, which put thousands of patients waiting for treatment in specialist wards at risk.

As the National Hell Service lurches from crisis to crisis, we can see that the initial piecemeal reforms undertaken by Blair have failed. The costs of the payscales introduced have increased employment costs without any corresponding increase in productivity.

NHS staff have seen their wages increase by more than 10 per cent, with the basic salary of nurses rising by 15 per cent in three years.

However, the report says that the Government seriously underestimated the cost of restructuring the pay system. It claims that the new system "has exceeded all cost estimates" and, together with the new contracts for GPs and senior hospital doctors, contributed to half of the £900 million gross deficit recorded by the health service in 2006/7.

"Agenda for Change was intended to modernise more than a million NHS jobs and improve patient care," said Niall Dickson, the King's Fund chief executive.

"However, this limited but important study shows that as yet there are few signs it has delivered increased productivity or transformed practice and there is evidence that many staff are far from satisfied by the process. One of the most significant concerns raised by the report is the absence of an independent, robust evaluation of the impact of Agenda for Change - despite the fact that templates for such evaluation have been developed.

Since Brown is already rowing back from health service reforms, it is difficult to see short term solutions or sticking plasters to these difficulties, embedded as they are within socialised medicine. More suffering to follow....

Sweden's Present Dilemma, Europe's Future Choice

The pacifism and downward spiral in the military capabilities of NATO's 'old Europe' members is understandable. Sheltering under the US umbrella for the Cold War and abandoning force in favour of soft power as part of the European Union, they have left themselves defenceless as geopolitics returns to the world of battalions. One fellow-traveller that traversed this path as far as they could go is Sweden.

In less than fifteen years Sweden has gone from having a national defence force to a security policy based on the assumption that territorial defence is no longer needed. Military resources are only deemed relevant as political markers in distant conflicts and Sweden's territory has become nothing more than a training ground and a shipping station.

This total focus on symbolic international operations may be an international phenomenon, but there has been no more rapid and all-encompassing shift in Sweden's security policy since the end of the country's time as a great power.

The article is focused upon Sweden's international deployments at the expense of national defence. Such calculations acquire renewed significance, as assumptions based upon Russian democracy, falter under the aggressive foreign policy pursued by Putin. The recent call for a ten percent cut in defence expenditure sounds like the final calm before the storm.

Russia will continue to remilitarise and aggress, aided and abetted by co-operative powers within the European Union and in Asia. They may well view the Baltic as their 'sea' with implications for their neighbours. Sweden may face a clear cut choice to acquiesce in their own irrelevance: Finlandisation or perhaps worse; or re-arming to counter this potential threat to their territory and surrounding waters.

New Hero: Media Master At Work

How do you raise your profile as an action man on issues in the spotlight? Concern yourself with solving the problems of the mainstream media.

Mr Brown has been taking increasing personal involvement in major media issues.

While he was still chancellor last year, he was instrumental in pushing through a tough licence fee settlement with the BBC.

And in November, Mr Brown greeted Ofcom's proposals for tighter restrictions on junk food ads around children's shows by saying he would host a seminar with broadcasters and other groups to see what more could be done.

A coordinated and masterly long-term campaign to raise Brown's profile as a concerned problem-solver. Complete bollix of course...

Brown's Administration: Seeds of Failure

Just as the case for an EU referendum is now compelling, before Brown condemns Parliament to irrelevance, so assessments of public sector reform reveal that the Prime Minister reverses time.

The new administration has introduced a deeply divided policy programme.  It is based on a positive approach to competition and financial management in the economy but a significant retreat from reform across the most important areas of the public sector:

-                      the NHS – a twelve-month review of health policy when urgent decisions on cost control and reform are already one to two years overdue; and delays and cancellations of contracts to allow private sector companies to compete for NHS-funded treatment;

-                      student / university finance – an increase in taxpayer-funded maintenance grants which contradicts the principle of tuition fees;

-                      schools – an increase in the regulation of city academies and an explicit rejection of school choice; and

-                      housing – a Green Paper proposing housebuilding according to central priorities.

This has already resulted in more financial commitments in three weeks, at a time when the government is grasping for money and quite likely to put up taxes. As disposable income is already falling, this will result in further entrenchment of the consumer. Reform retrenchment can be witnessed in the structure of new Cabinet government:

In this culling, some of Mr Blair’s personal interests have disappeared, such as antisocial behaviour, animal rights and serious organised crime and drugs, along with subject committees on NHS reform, schools and welfare reform.....

Mr Brown will chair the committee on life chances (covering social exclusion and talent and enterprise), plus the new committee on national security, international relations and development – in effect a national security council covering foreign, defence and antiterrorism policy. Mr Brown chairs two of its subcommittees, as well as the committee on security and intelligence services.....

The minister to watch is Ed Miliband, who has a coordinating role in the Cabinet Office, as well as drafting the Labour manifesto. He chairs subcommittees on community cohesion and equality, delivery of public services and social exclusion. He will be a big influence on the Brown Government’s policies.

The hallmark of Labour's new 'big government' is becoming clear. Despite calls for decentralisation, Brown has moved away from reform and wishes to use the existing bureaucracies to deliver service. A bonfire of the targets is a shift away from that particular mode of control, but Whitehall (Treasury) again exerts control over all aspects of expenditure and delivery. With the emphasis on social cohesion and communities, we an expect Labour's policies to employ social controls that shore up the effects of welfarism and dependency. We also know that they will fail, accelerating failures of governance and the cracks within our creaking social fabric.