The United States of Europe

What Merkel and Sarkozy have grasped and Cameron has not, is that a United States of Europe will be so much more than the individual countries are on their own.
The European countries are at a crossroad. The sway they held over the world when they were cultured and adventurous and much of the world was savage has long gone. America, with its federation of states, became dominant in the 20th century. China is dominant now. And India, Brazil and the other tigers are coming up fast.
Change is everywhere. The change that ended the USSR; the change in the Arab world; the change in financial certainties.
Do we see all this and re-think our own position? Not if we are David Cameron and the Tory right. They still think we are a world power.
Others are taking a new look. Alex Salmond in Scotland is thinking the unthinkable. Independence for the tartan hordes. As most of the Scottish voters voted for his party, he is likely to win his argument. What then?
He might create an alliance with the Scandanavian countries. But what if he wrote to Brussels and said 'We'd like to be a European country, complete with the euro'?
That might make the anti-Europe English sit up. If the Scots believe there is a benefit in being part of a federation, maybe it wouldn't be so bad. It has certainly helped the Irish to get out of the financial hole they dug themselves.
The Tory right and the popular press don't like the idea, but if there was a United States of Europe with a single president, a single currency and financial policy, a single defence/attack policy, would Britain still be great?
Could anyone have forseen that the proud Germans would give up their mark, the French give up their franc? That a graduate in Bordeaux could get a job in Frankfurt or Rome? That a company making widgets in Rotterdam could sell them easily from Poland to Spain?
Would we be as likely to rush off and invade Iraq or Afghanistan if our vainglorious leaders had to get more level-headed leaders in Berlin and Madrid to agree first?
In our isolated island, we concentrate too much on our Parliamentary history, our hatred of bureaucracy, our fear of change.
We should be more positive and see the possibilities of a U.S.E.
Any party which is brave enough at the next election to say it will join Europe and the euro will get my vote.

Hey, you, get offa my cloud

Mick Jagger was way ahead of the curve when he used 'my cloud' as a metaphor for my patch in 1965.
Today, everyone wants us to make their cloud 'my cloud'.
We can do our work in Google's cloud. Apple will let us store our tunes and pictures in the iCloud. Amazon want us to store the digital stuff we buy from them in their cloud. And Facebook allow us to publish our lives in their cloud.
Whose cloud do you want to get ona?
The great advantage of clouds is that much of what they are selling is free. Why any small business chooses to pay Microsoft hundreds of pounds per computer for apps like Word and Excel when Google give you docs for free beats me.
Ah, say the doomsayers, but it's not under your control. What if Google breaks down? what if the Internet breaks down? What about your privacy?
But look at the odds. What would Ray Winstone give on someone spilling coffee on your computer before Google breaks down?
Which is more likely: your office server packing up or the Internet keeling over?
And keeping yourself private is a very difficult and very expensive thing to try. There is lots of information on all of us out there on various clouds and most of it is making life easier for us.
Google know a lot about me because I use their services. I get a benefit; they get a benefit. Sounds fair.
Amazon know a lot about me because I buy stuff from them. Fine. They gave a me a free Kindle app for my phone, so I can read my books without carting my Kindle reader about.
And Google and Amazon are good companies. Their reputation is better than that of newspapers or politicians, for example.
Managing your privacy - giving up a bit here and there to gain an advantage - is a better game.
The world needs information. Amazon and Tesco use the information they hold about everything they sell and everyone they sell it to much better than most firms. Wonga will lend money to people who cannot get it from a bank, just by checking the information about those people which is out in the clouds. Even people who use Lidl, rather than Tesco, have enough data floating about to allow Wonga to say yes or no.
If you go to hospital, they take great pains to keep your medical details private. Only for certain eyes. Why? There is nothing shameful about being ill. These days, it appears, there is nothing shameful about having an embarrassing body and showing it on Channel 4. So why the secrecy? The more doctors and nurses who can see my problem, the better chance I have of getting a solution to it.
And why was there so much opposition to the idea of identify cards? A single number for me which will tell the NHS, the taxman, DVLA, the TV licence people and the passport office who I am would surely be better than the present convoluted mess.
But the minute a government suggests getting an outside company to do some of this more efficiently, people complain that they are privatising much-loved public assets.
The sooner Google are managing my data in their cloud the happier I will be.

How would you spend it?

Two items in the news this week fit together rather nicely - the protesters in the City of London are calling for some new thinking and The Guardian published its brilliant graphic showing what the Government is spending our money on.
I’m all for new ideas coming from the public. They tend to be more sensible than the ideas governments put forward.
And I’m all for a new look at how governments - Left or Right - spend our money.
On the left of this table is how the coalition government is currently spending our taxes.
On the right, the changes my government would propose.

Total spend, in billions	691.67			Suggested spend	625.49
Work, pensions, benefits	160.68	23.23%		160.68	25.69%
Health	105.60	15.27%		105.60	16.88%
Education	58.34	8.43%		58.34	9.33%
Revenue and customs	45.78	6.62%		24.21	3.87%
Debt interest	43.90	6.35%		39.51	6.32%
Defence	39.46	5.71%		3.46	0.55%
Local government	37.80	5.47%		37.80	6.04%
Scotland	34.88	5.04%		34.88	5.58%
Business	24.04	3.48%		24.04	3.84%
Wales	15.87	2.29%		15.87	2.54%
Transport	12.32	1.78%		12.32	1.97%
Home Office	10.45	1.51%		10.45	1.67%
Justice	9.46	1.37%		9.46	1.51%
Ireland	9.05	1.31%		9.05	1.45%
Climate	8.06	1.17%		8.06	1.29%
International	7.68	1.11%		3.46	0.55%
Culture, media, sport	7.02	1.01%		7.02	1.12%
Others	61.28	8.86%		61.28	9.80%

The main savings come from Defence spending. Do we still need the army, navy, air force and nuclear deterrent we needed when we were threatened by invasion by Germany 60 years ago?
The world is different now. The threat of invasion no longer exists. We use our military forces to attack other countries, not to defend our own.
There are threats, but do we need military might to defeat terrorism, or is intelligence a better weapon?
My government would slash Defence spending and beef up GCHQ.
I’d also cut international aid. How much of the £7.68 billion is doing good and how much is simply going in to venal pockets? We should be looking towards Europe, not towards Africa.
Finally, I would cut the amount we spend on collecting taxes. We need a simpler tax system which needs fewer taxmen and women to administer and fewer lawyers to investigate.
The savings from those three areas would reduce our borrowing and cut the amount we have to pay in interest charges.

There must be other new ideas out there. My government does not have exclusive rights to wisdom. The figures are public. How would you spend it?